THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 495 



the most northerly point of land seen by us the previous year. 

 They had a team of dogs that were fresh because of several days 

 of rest taken while Storkerson was making astronomical observa- 

 tions at Cape Murray and then waiting for me to catch up after 

 Emiu overtook him. 



May 5th I sent Natkusiak inland to hunt. The hunting move 

 was to inspire his interest, and to have him find out what sort of 

 country it was. He reported that for the first five or ten miles — 

 he is a poor judge of distance and never could learn to estimate in 

 miles — the land was generally level. It was in most parts deeply 

 covered with snow under which there might have been vegetation, 

 for snow catches in grass and naturally it is the barren spots that 

 are blown bare of snow in the winter storms. The bare patches 

 were usually red mud or sand and gravel on the tops of small 

 ridges. On this land there were no caribou traces, confirming Nat- 

 kusiak's assumption that vegetation was probably scarce; but fif- 

 teen or eighteen miles inland he came to rolling hills and later to 

 kimirkpait (singular kimirkpak) , the Alaska Eskimo name for 

 hills that are somewhat angular in appearance and have a height 

 of from four to eight hundred feet. Here caribou traces were 

 numerous and vegetation abundant. The caribou had been in small 

 bands, the largest one of fifteen or eighteen animals. Thick weather 

 came on and Natkusiak did not find any caribou, but he secured 

 what I wanted — the information as to the character of the land. 

 We could hardly have afforded to delay to fetch meat at this stage 

 from twenty miles inland so it was lucky he killed none. 



In general the rest of the west coast of our new land fitted 

 well Natkusiak's description of the territory back of Cape Murray, 

 and corresponded also in topography and scarcity of vegetation 

 with the west coast of Prince Patrick Island. That both Prince 

 Patrick Island and ours are well supplied with vegetation inland 

 and to the east, while comparatively barren along the west coast, 

 may be due to geological reasons, although possibly due to the 

 raw winds which in summer bring continuous fogs from the open 

 water to the west. 



The season of fog was beginning, and for the next month or 

 six weeks we had no day that was wholly clear and on an average 

 not one in seven that was satisfactory for good surveying, even 

 of the rough type we were attempting. My aim was to average 

 ten miles a day. At this speed fairly good mapping can be done 

 on a scale of an inch to the mile, if conditions of visibility are favor- 

 able and the coastline pronounced enough so that one can see at a 



