THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 415 



lore. For instance, I was told once about a man who dropped 

 his hunting knife through a hole in the ice where he was fishing 

 and who pronounced a charm and then rolled up his sleeve and 

 reached down and picked the knife off the bottom. When I heard 

 the story I imagined that the charm had been wholly unnecessary 

 and that the water simply had not been deeper than twelve or 

 fifteen inches. I learned later, however, that this incident occurred 

 on the ice of Dolphin and Union Straits where the water is probably 

 thirty fathoms deep. In other words, what I first took for a simple 

 fact would have had to be a miracle. 



This information was obtained from Illun between October 

 2nd and 15th. It will give some idea of the general character of 

 my diaries to say that the total number of pages covering these 

 days is ten and that about five are devoted to fact, myth, and mir- 

 acle as told me by the various Eskimos. If all my diaries for the 

 time I have spent in the Arctic were examined, I think that, ice 

 journeys apart, the number of pages devoted to information se- 

 cured from the Eskimos is somewhat greater than fifty per cent. 

 It is the advantage of our comfortable winter camps, as I have said, 

 that even in January with the temperature outside perhaps fifty 

 below zero we can sit comfortably in our most casual traveling 

 camps, writing down information with a fountain pen. Were we 

 as uncomfortable as polar explorers have usually been we should 

 have neither the inclination to listen to such yarns nor the facilities 

 for recording them if we did. 



The first aurora of the year appeared on this journey on October 

 8th. While auroras are commonest in midwinter they are fre- 

 quently seen earlier in the season than this, and I have once seen 

 an aurora in summer when the sun was just beneath the horizon 

 in the north and there was daylight enough at midnight for the 

 reading of ordinary print. These are beautiful and wonderful 

 phenomena but so are sunsets. Both have been frequently de- 

 scribed in print and the auroras have been especially dwelt on by 

 nearly every polar explorer. Had I some new and plausible ex- 

 planation to offer for the aurora it would be forthcoming, but for 

 word pictures I refer the reader to almost any polar book in a 

 circulating library. Words must always be inadequate to de- 

 scribe such phenomena to those who have not seen them, but 

 sketches and painting are better. I know none so good as those 

 published by Anthony Fiala in the scientific results of the Fiala- 

 Ziegler Expedition. 



