550 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



midwinter when there is little daylight even at noon and the tem- 

 perature falls to thirty or forty degrees below zero. And yet noth- 

 ing serious has ever happened to any of us. 



On the several hundreds of occasions on which I have courted 

 what Osborn calls "the danger of people going from their party in 

 chase of game" I have never failed to find camp at night although 

 the men had sometimes traveled fifteen or twenty miles after I 

 left them, and although I might have gone as much as fifteen or 

 twenty miles inland. Of course we observe certain elementary 

 precautions. The men have to camp in some place easily found, 

 which means that they must not camp where there is any great 

 difficulty in distinguishing the meeting place of the sea ice and the 

 land, nor camp in towards the bottoms of deep bays. When I 

 descend to the coast after the day's hunt I have a rough idea of 

 whether the sledges are ahead or behind. I go to some promontory 

 they must have passed and pick up the trail, or determine from its 

 absence that they have not passed. On occasions of special per- 

 plexity the men may put a lantern outside if they have one; or if, 

 as in our present case, no lantern is available, they will burn a 

 candle within the camp so that the flame will show through. Of 

 course in foggy weather and in blizzards the tent cannot be seen 

 more than a few yards, but even then it can be found; and if it 

 cannot be found (which never has happened to me), you merely 

 have the tedium of passing a night in the open or in an unheated 

 snowhouse which you have to build for yourself. 



On the journey around the southeast corner of Borden Island 

 I had many long hunts inland with very little result. Tracks of 

 wolves seemed to me to be more numerous than tracks of caribou. 

 Two diary entries of these excursions are typical, except that the 

 difficulty of finding camp on the 18th was a little out of the ordi- 

 nary. For some reason the men, for about the only time on the 

 trip, had neglected to go in close to every prominent headland so 

 as to give me a chance to pick up the trail. This was our invariable 

 rule. If I found no trail at a conspicuous headland and if the con- 

 ditions were such that a trail could have been seen, I assumed that 

 the sleds were behind, and in every case except that of the 18th 

 correctly. When a blizzard was blowing and a trail could not be 

 seen, I had to rely on my judgment as to the direction to be taken. 

 In such case I would be sure to descend to the coast near enough 

 to the starting point of the day for the sleds to have gone farther 

 and then I would go on and find them ahead. The diary entries 

 follow: 



