THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 287 



plans, leaving him by the carcass to watch for bears while I re- 

 turned to the ship with a load of bear meat and the news of our 

 find. That evening Thomsen went to the whale with a dog team 

 and twenty or thirty fox traps to spend the night with Natkusiak. 

 They divided the traps between them and set them one lot at 

 each end of the carcass. At first they caught the foxes at the rate 

 of eight or ten an hour, and sat up nearly all night at the work of 

 skinning. 



This whale proved of the greatest usefulness. Not only did we 

 get a dozen or more bears in connection with it, but it furnished 

 excellent dog feed that year and even the year following, for 

 decay of a whale carcass lying in such a position is exceedingly 

 slow. It was half buried in sand, but in summer continually bathed 

 with sea water. As the temperature of the polar sea is actually 

 below the freezing point of fresh water (often as much as 2° F. 

 below freezing) it was not strange that decay should not be rapid, 

 especially when one remembers that the sea water is happily im- 

 pregnated with common salt and other chemicals that are bac- 

 tericidal in nature and of well known efficacy in preserving meat. 



With this work going on, Natkusiak and I nevertheless found 

 time for an exploratory crossing of the south end of Banks Island. 

 Since we made this in the darkness of midwinter, first-class ge- 

 ographic results were not to be expected. Our main purpose was, 

 in fact, to pay a visit to the Eskimos whom we supposed to be 

 wintering on the southeast corner of the island. The supposition 

 that we should find them there was based on the verbal statements 

 of these Eskimos themselves when in the spring of 1911 I had 

 met them on their return from Banks Island on the ice of Prince 

 Albert Sound.* Eskimos may be as truthful as any people, and 

 they are; nevertheless, they give wrong impressions even to one 

 another and to those most conversant with them because of their 

 fatal lack of exact words for time and distance. Although the 

 Mackenzie River Eskimos, for instance, have numerals and can 

 count up to four hundred (twenty twenties) those of Victoria 

 Island, Coronation Gulf, and vicinity (the Copper Eskimos) cannot 

 count above six. They have to describe distances by such indefinite 

 terms as "not far" or "very far," and with regard to time their 

 vocabulary is almost equally vague. We now know that the por- 

 tion of the winter spent by them on the southeast corner of Banks 

 Island is not January, but March and April. 



But not knowing it then, we devoted much of December to a 



*See "My Life With the Eskimo," p. 281. 



