THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 451 



an hour to go from our camp, pick up the two or three hundred 

 pounds at the depot, and come home. 



I spent the day talking with the Eskimos and writing down 

 folklore and linguistic notes. Guninana is one of the best Eskimo 

 informants I ever had and some of the chief ethnological results 

 of my former expedition were based upon her information. I 

 was absorbed in what I was doing and did not go outdoors, but 

 believed that Emiu was already doing his errand. But about two 

 o'clock we had something to eat when Emiu, to my surprise, came 

 in and joined us. He explained that he had been practicing snow- 

 house-building all day and that he had now built a beautiful porch 

 to our structure of the previous evening, inasmuch as the old house 

 left us by Wilkins was not large enough for our entire party. I 

 suggested that he had better make his trip to the depot right away, 

 which he said he would do, remarking that it would only take a 

 few minutes. 



No one in the camp knew exactly when he left but presumably 

 it was about three o'clock when daylight was nearly gone. There 

 was clear starlight, however, with little reason for any one to lose 

 his way. When at five o'clock I went outdoors and found Emiu 

 and his sled missing I was not immediately disturbed, for the 

 weather was beautiful and there was starlight enough so that our 

 sledge trail of the evening before on the snow could be seen by 

 any one trying to follow it. But at five-thirty I placed a lighted 

 lantern as a precautionary measure on top of the house. This 

 beacon could be seen for at least five miles in every direction, but 

 there was the trouble with it that a lantern seen on the horizon 

 on a starlit night looks so much like a star that only a careful 

 person will distinguish one from the other. 



By eight o'clock we were genuinely alarmed. We pictured 

 what had happened. Emiu could not have failed to reach the island, 

 for that was silhouetted against the fading daylight in the south- 

 west. He must have found the cache, packed his load, and started 

 for home. Here he would fall victim to one of the weaknesses due 

 to his bringing up with white men in Alaska, who generally over- 

 estimate the intelligence of dogs. Emiu had a naive belief that 

 his dogs could find the way when he himself could not. Doubtless 

 he had sat down on the sled, shouted to his dogs and they had dashed 

 off at high speed in the general direction of home. It could not have 

 taken them more than fifteen or twenty minutes to reach the neigh- 

 borhood of the camp but they must have gone by without stopping, 

 not realizing where it was or possibly going on through mere excess 



