556 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



We have searched the whole south coast of Borden Island without 

 finding the depot he was to make for us and have been to Cape 

 Murray without getting a message from him or the hunting party 

 that was to camp there. This is setback the first in the work of 

 next year and a serious one, for we can now have no winter base 

 at Cape Murray. Castel was to cache for us boots, ammunition 

 and other equipment, and failing to find these we are not in a 

 position to put up meat. Besides, if we stay here the same men 

 who have failed us now would probably fail us again and spend 

 the winter where they can be most comfortable and least useful 

 and leave us unsupported, so our work up here would come to noth- 

 ing anyway. The best we can now do is to go to Melville Island 

 and help to prepare everything there for the spring work. Noice 

 volunteered to stay at Cape Murray to protect any meat we might 

 put up while the sun lasts." 



I interrupt this quotation on finding it obscure in its reference 

 to a very sportsmanlike offer made by Noice. He suggested that 

 we might all stay near Cape Murray for as long as the daylight 

 lasted, putting up meat; then when the darkness came on he would 

 stay there alone to protect the meat while we went to Melville Is- 

 land to arrange cooperation with our people there and to send a 

 sled up to him in January. Here I am able to continue the quota- 

 tion: 



"I dare not accept this offer, for we may possibly find condi- 

 tions so bad in Melville Island that it would be difficult to send 

 a sled back to him. We are therefore all starting for Melville 

 Island to-day. We started from a camp six miles north of Jenness 

 Island and traveled southerly along the coast about seventeen 

 miles. Fog on the land prevented hunting." 



On the way south across the ice towards Melville Island we 

 made tea for the first time in months. Travelers in polar regions 

 and campers in the "Great North Woods," as the sportsmen's 

 magazines have it, have said a great deal about the exhilarating 

 effect of tea. Some of these writers call it the most desirable of 

 luxuries while others consider it a necessity. On our ships in 

 winter quarters and on sledge trips near a base camp most of the 

 men, including myself, drink quantities of tea, but with the ex- 

 tamer environments, that the moods of yesterday are difficult to enter into 

 to-day. My mind has now a very different picture of the expedition from 

 what I find in my diaries. I have assumed that the reader would be interested 

 in the feelings and outlook he might have shared had he been with us, 

 rather than in direct facts as they appear now that time has settled imcertain- 

 ties and reversed contemporary judgments. 



