CHAPTER LIV 



WE DISCOVER PEOPLE AND A COAL MINE 



ON the 5th we started traveling southeast, the team following 

 the coast and I hunting overland. Because of the toughness 

 of the ovibos meat which we could well use for dog feed if 

 we had something else, I shot three out of four caribou found about 

 a mile from the beach, the team coming right up to the spot with 

 the load and taking on the meat without the special trip inland. 



This day I saw again the ovibos herd which I had counted at 

 fourteen two days before. They were now more scattered and I 

 made out seventeen with a possibility of more. It is nearly always 

 so in estimating herds at a distance. You put the number too low, 

 and the lower the less your experience. You may estimate too 

 high the caribou in a given area, such as Banks Island or in 

 Canada north of the treeline, but I have never known any one 

 who did not have a tendency to underestimate a herd actually 

 in sight. 



On October 7th, "I left camp about ten A. M. and the others a 

 half hour later. I hunted towards the Raglan Range . . . but 

 failed to see any game and came down to the coast some five or six 

 miles south of Cape Grassy at half-dark. Found a sled trail badly 

 snowed up by a wind that blew for an hour about noon. Started 

 following this south (assuming it was our sled trail) but soon noted 

 that the footprints, although badly snowed over, showed by the 

 turning out of the toes that the man was walking north. My 

 suspicions once aroused, I soon verified this by a dog track on a 

 hard snowdrift also going north. This was then not our trail. 

 I next took it to be that of two men traveling light to look for us 

 in Borden Island. Followed trail and found it turned west around 

 Grassy, keeping near the land. Soon I saw a light, which proved 

 that a camp other than ours was ahead, for we have been saving 

 fat and have used no light as yet and a light would not show so 

 clearly through our dark tent, anyway. When I got nearer a man 

 came running to meet me. It was Natkusiak, apparently quite as 

 glad to see me as I was him, which is saying much." 



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