THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 557 



ception of one or two Eskimos we have never had in cur advance 

 parties any men so fond of it that they did not soon conclude 

 that making it was more bother than it was worth. 



Fuel spent on heating tea is wasted when in boiling meat you 

 have as an inevitable by-product a broth that is an excellent drink. 

 If you put on the stove a potful of ice after the meat is boiled 

 and turn it into water and the water into tea, the primus or what- 

 ever cooking device you have uses most of its heat for producing 

 temperature changes in the ice and water and not in the room, 

 and whatever heat escapes from the tea does so in the form of 

 steam, which is a disagreeable method of heating. Our white men 

 have been agreed that if the stove was to be burned after the meat 

 had been cooked it was better to burn it without any pot above to 

 absorb the heat, thus getting full warmth and dryness in tent or 

 snowhouse. We have always taken a certain amount of tea on 

 our trips, but from this our longest trip we brought back half of 

 what we started with. Those who have always used tea will, of 

 course, always remain convinced that no sensible camper or traveler 

 would do without it, but we feel differently. 



The journey south from Borden Island towards Melville Island 

 was an anxious one. Our progress had been slow since leaving 

 Lougheed Island and uncomfortable, for even now that the tem- 

 perature had begun to drop well below zero we were still com- 

 pelled to use the tent, having met with not a single snowdrift 

 hard enough for house building. The hunt over Borden Island had 

 given more knowledge of the country than game, for even when 

 caribou cannot be seen through the snow or fog at three hundred 

 yards, rocky outcrops are visible and the grass when you kick 

 the snow away. We had started from Lougheed Island with sev- 

 eral hundred pounds of dried meat and caribou fat. We finished the 

 last of the dried meat on Borden Island near Jenness Island, and 

 had now a little of the Lougheed Island fat and about half the 

 meat of the four caribou killed near Jenness Island. 



Then we were all depressed through not finding Castel's ex- 

 pected depot or Natkusiak's party at Cape Murray. These things 

 had their worst effect in inclining us to think that all sorts of 

 mishaps and miscarriages had occurred and that not only were 

 prospects for next spring considerably darkened but the situation 

 might be bad in Melville Island. We even talked of the possibility 

 of finding nobody there, although it was difficult to assign any rea- 

 son for thinking so remarkable a thing could happen. 



In these high latitudes darkness comes on with giant strides 



