THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 243 



the most palatable parts, the heads and back bones, and the dogs 

 lived mainly on the internal organs, while we sliced thin, spread 

 out on stones and dried in the sun for future use the hams, shoulders 

 and other fleshy parts. Being sailors, Storkerson and Ole were both 

 good at sewing, and they talked much about the fine clothes they 

 were going to make from the skins for themselves and me if the 

 ships should fail to bring Eskimo families with their incomparable 

 seamstresses from the mainland. 



Like many others, I had gathered from reading polar books 

 that fuel is hard to get in arctic lands, at least where driftwood is 

 absent. But during my previous expedition I had learned that on 

 the mainland of northern Canada, at least, there is excellent fuel 

 to be found nearly everywhere, and so it proved on Banks Island. 

 It has always been a marvel to me how the northern Indians who 

 hunt out on the so-called "barren grounds" and the Eskimos of 

 northern Alaska are able to grow up from childhood to maturity 

 and old age without learning, either by accident or by the instruc- 

 tion of some wiser people, how to use certain common plants 

 for fuel. 



Readers of Frank Russell, Warburton Pike, Caspar Whitney, and 

 others know how the northern Indians load up their sleds with dry 

 spruce wood for furtive dashes into the dreaded "barren grounds." 

 They use a little for cooking each day, and when in a week or so the 

 supply is gone they expect to be on their way back and almost 

 within reach of the spruce forests again. And if through any cir- 

 cumstance the journey is a little long, there are tales of hardship 

 which seems to be felt no less keenly by the Indian than by the 

 white narrator. It was so with the Eskimos of northern Alaska. 

 When they went inland in days antedating blue-flame kerosene 

 stoves, they used to take with them driftwood from the coast, or 

 seal or whale oil to burn in their stone stoves or lamps. If they 

 ran out of these they used to dig in the snow for willows, being thus 

 a stage in advance of the northern Indian in resourcefulness in the 

 open country. But if no willows were to be found and the seal 

 oil ran out, they hurried back to the coast without a fire. This in 

 spite of the fact that most or all coast tribes in Alaska knew that 

 there were other Eskimo tribes in the interior — the inland Otur- 

 kagmiut and their neighbors — who had the art of finding fuel other 

 than willows in the open country wherever they went. The Macken- 

 zie River Eskimos to the eastward are completely ignorant of how 

 to find fuel in the open country even in summer, except willows. 

 But the Eskimos of Coronation Gulf and east all the way to Hud- 



