THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 255 



the bottom would be accompanied by a wind that shoved it on the 

 land. What we would have to hope for would be first a west wind, 

 raising the water level, and then a sudden shift of wind through 

 south to east before the water had time to fall, a sequence of cir- 

 cumstances that might not occur in a whole summer. 



After a day at the camp we started back towards Storkerson's 

 hunting place, leaving all our dried meat and skins on an elevated 

 platform high enough to escape wolves and foxes, although unpro- 

 tected against polar bears. When we got to where I had killed the 

 fat bull two days before we found that foxes and gulls had eaten 

 about a third of the meat and about half the fat. The gulls alone 

 would not have had the ingenuity to get at the fat where I had 

 hidden it, but the foxes had pulled the concealing meat away. It 

 happened that I was able to kill that evening another fat bull a 

 few hundred yards from the same place, to make up for the loss. 



White foxes were spending the summer in Banks Island in large 

 numbers, but we lost surprisingly little meat by their thieving. 

 Often they seemed even contemptuous in the way they passed it by 

 untouched. This was probably because they were so well fed with 

 eggs, young birds and lemmings. 



When we got back to Storkerson we found that he had been 

 bothered by wolves much as Ole had been. Some of our meat was 

 at his camp but a considerable part of it was still out in the field, 

 where several caribou had been killed, cut up and their meat spread 

 out to dry to make it lighter for carrying home, only the fat being 

 immediately taken to camp. Our experience with foxes and gulls 

 had been that they were not very destructive of the meat, but now 

 that wolves were about much of it was lost. 



Wolves had been few during our first month and their appear- 

 ance now was probably connected with the approach of the cow 

 caribou. So far we had seen large bulls chiefly — very few cows and 

 few small bulls. Now small bulls and cows became numerous, 

 apparently coming from the north or northeast. This did not mean 

 that caribou became as numerous as on the mainland, for we never 

 saw more than twenty or thirty a day. I have seen a band of about 

 two hundred in Banks Island, but several years' experience shows 

 that bands of two hundred are as rare in Banks Island as bands 

 of two thousand on the mainland north of Great Bear Lake. In 

 summer there are probably not more than two or three thousand 

 caribou in the whole island, with perhaps a few more in winter 

 that come from Victoria Island to the east. 



Partly to explore further and partly to give Ole a chance to 



