THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 569 



the fresh meat of about sixty caribou inland. The caribou meat 

 seemed fairly safe from bears because of not being close to the 

 coast, but the dried meat on the coast was in obvious danger. 



I talked with Emiu and Castel about their wish to go to the 

 Bear and found that while Castel's desire was unchanged, Emiu 

 now said he would prefer to spend the winter with us in Liddon 

 Gulf, for I told him that even if the Bear were at Winter Harbor 

 I should not spend much time there. Emiu said that if he might 

 be allowed to bring back some sardines and canned salmon from 

 the Bear and possibly some sugar for tea, he would really prefer 

 to spend the winter in a hunting camp. He said that when he 

 left me at Isachsen in the spring he had been longing very intensely 

 for "good grub" but that he was now all over it except that he han- 

 kered for tinned sardines. 



We have said that Emiu enjoyed nothing so much as dashing 

 around at top speed with a big team of fast dogs and an empty 

 sled in the fashion of the dog racers around Nome, and that a big 

 part of his usefulness was in carrying messages from one party 

 to another. In Alaska where you can buy dog feed at road houses 

 and where business men have to travel fast because of the value 

 of time, speed driving is useful, but where the ice is as rough as 

 in most places in the far North you cannot drive fast with a loaded 

 sled without breaking it, which merely follows from the law that 

 the shock of impact of a moving body varies with the square of 

 the velocity. If you double the speed you fourfold the strain upon 

 a loaded sled in rough going, and if you fourfold the speed you 

 multiply the strain sixteen times. This together with the difficulty 

 in securing dog feed for large teams makes it plain that the only 

 thing light enough to be profitably transferred in the North by 

 a fast dog team is information. If Emiu wanted to stay at the ship 

 that usefulness would disappear. He had been a cabin boy on the 

 Bear when I purchased her and his chief occupation dish-washing. 

 If he went back to the ship he would have to take his old job. 

 When I asked him whether he would prefer to eat good grub off 

 plates which he would have to wash or to drive dogs and eat meat 

 without dishes, his choice was made and he decided to stay by 

 his dog team and live in the camps. 



I now decided that Storkerson, proceeding to Winter Harbor 

 with one of his two teams, should be accompanied by Castel, whom 

 he would leave at the Bear, and Emiu, whom he would bring back. 

 It had been his intention if he did not find the Bear to continue 

 a day or two beyond to Dealy Island and investigate the depot 



