THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 365 



off I turned back and picked up a stone weighing thirty or forty 

 pounds and with this on my shoulder crossed safely. 



Soon we began to see moulting white geese and these increased 

 in number as we proceeded south. When no nests were found we 

 concluded that they were mostly or entirely males. Now and then 

 a bird was visible that we had not seen farther north. The first 

 golden plovers appeared July 27th and the same day blackheaded 

 terns. The smaller gray tern we had seen July 15th at Mercy Bay. 

 Although these were the first of either species we saw, we found 

 later that both go up to Melville Island. 



On this overland journey Thomsen had to break himself of the 

 salt habit and the tobacco habit. When we landed at Prince Pat- 

 rick Island from the sea ice we had thrown away everything that 

 we considered unnecessary — the primus stoves for which we no 

 longer had kerosene, a few odds and ends and six pounds of salt. 

 I do not know why we had taken so much in the first place, for 

 Storkerson, Ole and I the previous year had found our meat tasted 

 better after we quit using salt. Ole had been so convinced of this 

 that during the winter he had used no salt at his trapping camp. 

 I had reacquired the habit at the ship, for the cook seasoned the 

 food in the ordinary way, and Storkerson had picked it up again 

 at his own camp where his wife insisted on using salt. But we 

 were ready to give it up and Thomsen was not, and as a special 

 concession he had been allowed to bring along his own private salt 

 can. He had now come to the bottom of it. 



It has usually been my custom, and will always be so hereafter, 

 to require tobacco users to stop its use either before leaving the 

 home camp or at the time of starting.* But on this trip I had 

 allowed the carrying of tobacco. About the middle of the trip 

 Storkerson voluntarily quit so as to give Thomsen enough to take 

 him through. But Thomsen's use of it had been a little rapid and 

 about the time we left Melville Island his real tobacco was gone. 

 Thereafter he chewed pieces of cloth in which it had been carried, 

 and when that was done, small pieces of his own pipe and later the 

 pipes of Storkerson and Ole. We were not much beyond Mercy 

 Bay when even these had given out, and I had the interesting 



* "I have always selected men for my parties who used neither tobacco nor 

 spirits. . . . Tobacco is . . . objectionable in polar work. It affects the wind 

 endurance of a man, particularly in low temperature, adds an extra and en- 

 tirely unnecessary article to the outfit, vitiates the atmosphere of tent or 

 igloo, and when the supply gives out, renders the user a nuisance to himself 

 and to those about him." "Secrets of Polar Travel," by Robert E. Peary, 

 New York, 1917, pp. 74-77. 



