THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 491 



nearly every day but one gets so used to that that it calls for no 

 comment, and my diaries do not show more than one or two ref- 

 erences to it per year. Such frostbites are no more serious than 

 sunburn. The same has been the record of all my companions 

 whether Eskimo or white for the ten years in the Arctic covering 

 my last two expeditions, with the exceptions of freezing of the feet 

 by Captain Gonzales and a frozen heel by Knight on his trip across 

 Banks Island with Thomsen in midwinter. Knight had an idea 

 •that his feet differed from those of others in being much warmer 

 and would perspire if he were dressed like the rest of us. Fortu- 

 nately the freezing was not deep though it easily might have been. 

 It had the bad result of keeping Knight out of the spring work of 

 1916 but the good result of teaching him how to dress and of serving 

 as a warning to any others. 



So we may well consider that our section of the expedition was 

 remarkably free from the typical ills and accidents of the polar 

 explorer. But just north of Cape Grassy I suffered the first and 

 thus far the only serious accident of my career. We were travel- 

 ing at the rate of about five miles an hour through some rather 

 good going when my left foot broke through a perfectly ordinary 

 crusted snowdrift, giving me a twinge in the ankle. We should 

 have stopped right there and camped or I might have ridden upon 

 the load, for when the going was so good the dogs could have made 

 easy progress. But I foolishly kept walking for two or three miles, 

 the foot getting continually worse. I then rode on the sled for 

 three or four miles till we came to Storkerson's next snowhouse. 

 We were in the habit of covering two of Storkerson's marches in 

 one of ours, taking a noonday lunch in one of his snowhouses and 

 camping in the next, thus making about thirty miles a day against 

 his fifteen. But this time we camped where ordinarily we should 

 have made only a noonday halt. An hour after camping the pain 

 in the foot had become extreme and I could not flex the ankle joint 

 at all. 



The next day I rode on top of the sled in the forenoon, and 

 found it about the most unpleasant experience I ever had. It was 

 not only difficult and uncomfortable but there was the continual 

 mental distress of being no longer useful but a handicap. The 

 day after that we transferred about half of the load from one 

 sled to the other and I wrapped myself up inside the sled, traveling 

 blanketed and propped up in the manner of white men in western 

 Alaska. 



