THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 361 



rifled. Before this time the Investigator had sunk or else drifted 

 away, my informants did not know which. One year she had still 

 been on the beach and the next she was gone without a trace. A 

 man whom I judged to be under thirty had been a boy of eight or 

 ten when the last party had thought it worth their while to go to 

 Mercy Bay.* 



In view of the fact that Mercy Bay had for two winters been the 

 headquarters of a great polar expedition we were surprised to find 

 comparatively little correspondence between the map and the land. 

 The bay is not unlike itself on the chart, but there are islands in it 

 that are not indicated on the map, while the conspicuous sandspit 

 that is indicated at Providence Point does not now exist. But the 

 remarkable thing was that just west of Mercy Bay where the map 

 indicated a nearly straight coastline there is another bay almost 

 as conspicuous. The land on both sides is high, almost mountainous, 

 the bay is three or four miles wide and eight or ten miles deep. 

 In it is the mouth of far the largest river in Banks Island; a river 

 which, as we later learned, drains as large a part of it as any two 

 or three other rivers put together. 



Thinking that McClure's winter quarters had been correctly lo- 

 cated, partly because we knew that one of the men on his staff bore 

 the title of astronomer, we were particular to get good observations 

 at the place. We did secure fair ones despite unfavorable weather. 



It was here one of our two chronometers failed us. At first we 

 did not know which it was. That is the trouble with having only 

 two and is the reason why one should carry three or more, for then 

 the one that differs from the other two is recognized to be at fault. 

 In our case the one given me by O'Neill was supposed to be losing 

 fourteen seconds and the new one should have been gaining eight 

 seconds, making a difference of twenty-two seconds per day, with the 

 new one gaining. We compared them daily and had found their 

 rate reasonably constant so far, but at Mercy Bay the new chronom- 

 eter began to gain less and less and finally actually lost. It was 

 a good many days later, however, before it stopped altogether. 



While we were waiting for observations we took the boat tar- 

 paulin, now about worn out, and cut it up to make pack bags 

 for the dogs. One team was composed of big dogs which, because 

 of great strength and long legs, were able to carry from twenty to 

 forty pounds a distance of ten miles per day ; for short distances the 

 strongest could carry fifty or sixty pounds. But the other team 

 * See "My Life With the Eskimo," Chapters XVII and XVIII. 



