CHAPTER XXX 



MEN AND BEARS AS SEAL HUNTERS 



THE west coast of Prince Patrick Island was explored in 1853 

 by a party under command of Lieutenant Mecham, of Mc- 

 Clintock's expedition. Mecham tells how no country could 

 possibly be more barren or desolate. Not a blade of grass was found 

 nor a living creature, but gravel everywhere, and the land sloped so 

 imperceptibly to the sea that they had to dig through the snow 

 to ascertain whether they were on land or on ice. In view of this 

 and of the fact that we had been for several weeks out of fuel 

 and had finished our dog feed before that, it became necessary to 

 talk over the advisability of going on. We all knew that the 

 world would approve if we were to turn home at this point, for 

 it has been the rule in arctic exploration that the traveling parties 

 face toward home soon after half their provisions are gone, rely- 

 ing on the other half to take them back. It had been so with 

 Mecham and with McClintock; a portion of this very coast re- 

 mained unexplored because Mecham's party on the south and Mc- 

 Clintock's on the north had been forced by the partial exhaustion 

 of supplies to turn back toward their base on Melville Island. 



But I was delighted to find all of us agreeing that no risk of 

 life was involved in advancing into any portion of the Arctic 

 without supplies at this season of the year. While we did not ex- 

 pect to find Mecham wrong in saying that no life could be found 

 on the coast of Prince Patrick Island, we felt that this would only 

 mean that if our experience agreed with his we should have to 

 turn back to sea again, where, on the ice and in the water, food 

 could be secured. This was a fact that Mecham and the explorers 

 of his time did not realize, as we can see by his account pub- 

 lished in the Parliamentary Blue Books, and by Sir Clements 

 Markham's review of the work of Mecham and McClintock in 

 his "Life of Admiral McClintock." So we traveled on, enthusi- 

 astic not only about possible discoveries ahead, but about proving 

 that they are wrong who lack faith in the bounty of the Arctic. 



In following the coast northeastward we soon saw that 



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