280 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



you may make and the storm itself seems to make the animals 

 less watchful. While you have small chance of finding caribou 

 at all, yet if you do run into them you have a good chance of 

 getting them. 



We were in a country which none of us had previously seen, 

 and there were no river-courses or landmarks that could be thought- 

 lessly followed with the assurance that you could with equal 

 thoughtlessness follow them back again. In thick weather it is 

 a matter of the closest observation and the most careful reckoning 

 to find your way home to camp. As you advance you must notice 

 the speed at which you are walking and the time it takes to proceed 

 in any given direction, and must know exactly at what angle to 

 the wind you are traveling. Furthermore, you must check the wind 

 occasionally, either by pocket compass or by a snowdrift on the 

 ground, to see that it isn't changing, for an unnoticed change in 

 the wind would throw any reckoning completely out of gear. The 

 method is first to walk around the hill — our hunting-camps are 

 commonly on high hilltops — and study each face of it until you feel 

 sure that if you strike any point within half a mile of camp you 

 will recognize it on the return. When the topography of the half- 

 mile square or so surrounding camp has been memorized, you strike 

 out perhaps into the wind or perhaps at an angle of forty-five or 

 ninety degrees to it, and travel straight for an hour or two hours, 

 according to the degree of confidence you have in your ability to get 

 back. If no game has been found, you turn at some known angle, 

 commonly a right angle, to your original course and walk in that 

 direction an estimated distance, perhaps as far as in the first direc- 

 tion. If then nothing has been found you turn again, and if this 

 time also you make a right-angle turn, it is easy to calculate at 

 what time you are opposite camp and one hour or two hours' walk 

 away from it. Turning a third right angle will face you directly 

 for camp, and if you have been careful you will land within half a 

 mile of your mark, or within the area memorized before starting. 

 But should you miss it you will know at any rate at what time you 

 are close to camp, and by thinking the matter out you will see how 

 to walk around in circles or squares of continually increasing size 

 until you find a place you recognize. 



If in the course of your walk you do see game, your first thought 

 must be to take the time by the watch, or make some similar ob- 

 servation to assure yourself at that moment of the direction of your 

 camp. If you can kill the game at that spot the matter is simple, 



