496 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



distance the distinction between land and sea. The coastline here 

 was low, which gave some difficulty and is a source of much inac- 

 curacy in our survey. But the main trouble was with the fogs. 

 Like our predecessors who surveyed Prince Patrick Island, we had 

 to choose between doing work that approximated only roughly to 

 the facts and doing none at all. Obviously, remaining in camp six 

 days to wait for the seventh one of passable weather would waste 

 a whole season in the survey of one or two hundred miles of coast. 

 When the time comes that these lands are more accessible and 

 more highly valued a re-survey will be in any case necessary. We 

 aimed merely to do such preliminary work as will place our lands 

 on the map about as accurately as arctic islands previously discov- 

 ered and surveyed. 



The day after Storkerson left southbound, Natkusiak, Emiu 

 and I started north with two sledges, one bearing me as a passenger. 

 We made over thirty miles that day and overtook Castel's party 

 at their third camp. As we came up Noice was just finishing, with 

 the assistance of Charlie, the first snowhouse he had ever built. 

 It had been a slow job for him but it was very presentable. He 

 had had a good apprenticeship in assisting Thomsen, perhaps our 

 best snowhouse builder, who had made all the snowhouses on Stork- 

 erson's trip north. Still, the fact that he built a good house the 

 first time he tried makes it fairly clear that those must be wrong 

 who consider that there is something mysterious about the ability. 



Castel was not at the camp, having caught sight of three caribou 

 and gone in pursuit of them. In a little while he came home, say- 

 ing they had seen him and run away. Because of inexperience he 

 had underrated his ability and overestimated the distance to which 

 frightened caribou would run. The weather was clearing a little 

 and we could see from the camp where the caribou were grazing. 

 Natkusiak and Emiu went after them and got two out of three. 



Spring is the worst of all seasons among arctic islands. The 

 total snowfall of the year would probably not amount to more than 

 two or three inches of water when melted, but most of this falls in 

 the form of snow, mist, or fog between late April and late June. 

 As we advanced along the coast of the new land we had to contend 

 at all times with these unfavorable weather conditions. One of 

 our teams consisted of big, long-legged dogs, another of smaller 

 dogs that were used to soft snow, and the third of Eskimo dogs 

 from Victoria Island that were unused to it. It may seem strange 

 that Eskimo dogs should be unused to so typical a condition as 

 the soft snow of spring, but the point is that Eskimos do very little 



