258 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



the ground. These are near relatives of the people who came to 

 Banks Island to plunder the Investigator, and it may be that the 

 bodies of such people as died were similarly left. 



Ole's journey and mine was for pleasure and to pick up such 

 incidental information as came in our way. We traveled so light 

 that our three pack dogs were able to carry everything, and we 

 wandered from hilltop to hilltop, enjoying the scenery, examining 

 the ancient camp sites and killing a fat caribou whenever necessary. 

 This combined the freedom from care of a picnic with the fascina- 

 tion of exploration, for, except for Storkerson's excursion and mine 

 some weeks earlier we were the first white men who had been in 

 the interior of Banks Island. On the southwest side the American 

 whalers are known to have made two landings but they never went 

 beyond the beach, and the Eskimos whom they sent ashore to hunt 

 did not go over four or five miles inland, for I have talked with 

 them about it. It does not appear from McClure's records that in 

 the two years which he spent at the Bay of Mercy on the north- 

 east side of the island any of his men made journeys into the 

 interior. 



Since I began to know the North its beauty, freedom and friend- 

 liness have continually grown upon me. They were there from the 

 first but my eyes were holden and I could not see them, for even in 

 that clear air I walked wrapped in the haze of my bringing-up. 

 With southern feelings and an assumption of the inferiority of 

 that which is different, I failed to see the resources and values 

 where they lay before me, and distrusted everything that was 

 strange. Especially on such delightful and care-free journeys as we 

 were now making it is difficult to realize that this land is not only 

 assumed to be barren by those who do not know it, but has actually 

 appeared so to men who have been there. Certainly it would take 

 keen eyes to read between the lines of McClure's narrative of hard- 

 ship and heroism the soft beauty and homelikeness of Banks Island 

 as I see it. 



When we had wandered around until we thought Storkerson 

 might be getting lonesome, for he was unlike Ole, not used to living 

 alone, we made our way back and found him and everything well, 

 except that he was a little stiff from lying around the house in idle- 

 ness. The trouble had been that he could not very well leave camp 

 because of the hovering wolves. So long as a man is present a 

 camp is in no danger from them, but unguarded it is at their mercy, 

 whether there are dogs or not. For one thing, the dogs would not 

 have the sense to stay in the camp and attempt to guard it, but 



