THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 605 



style. This is made of light drilling but may be made of heavier 

 material, such as light khaki. I have found very dense fabrics 

 such as Burberry, unexcelled though they are for certain purposes, 

 undesirable for snow shirts, for the very denseness of fiber causes 

 hoar frost to form on the inside of Burberry that would form out- 

 side of drilling or khaki. 



Some of my men wore knitted woolen caps underneath a fur 

 hood, but personally I have never done this. I have found it es- 

 pecially inadvisable to have a hood that fits closely about the 

 face, for if the edge of the hood comes too near the mouth or nose, 

 the breath will get to it before the point of condensation is reached 

 and will form as ice. But if the hood comes only well over the 

 ears, the distance from the nostrils is great enough so that the 

 breath is condensed before it reaches it and settles on it in the 

 form of light hoar frost that can be easily brushed off. All Es- 

 kimos recognize this fact although they do not understand the 

 principle, and their hoods never fit closely around the face. It is 

 characteristic with white men who live among Eskimos to intro- 

 duce an "improvement" in a snug-fitting hood, but if these men 

 are out in cold weather they often freeze a circle on their face cor- 

 responding to the lining of ice that eventually forms on the hood. 

 Any kind of hood, no matter how "snug," is all right for a per- 

 son who is outdoors only a few hours and who can get into a road- 

 house at night, as do the Alaska travelers, where clothes can be 

 dried out. But a man who has to wear his coat day after day finds 

 this snug hood troublesome. 



Whether the clothing is as just described or merely the double 

 fur suit of the Eskimos, it is warm enough so that the air in con- 

 tact witli the skin inside of the underwear may be said to be at 

 tropical heat at all times. In consequence, a properly outfitted 

 arctic traveler suffers less from cold than do the inhabitants of 

 such countries as Scotland or Norway, who dress in porous cloth- 

 ing giving the wind a chance to reach the skin and lower the body 

 temperature. 



The late Archdeacon Hudson Stuck had a gift for terse expres- 

 sion well known to the readers of his delightful books about Alaskan 

 travel and to those who have heard him lecture. He was stationed 

 for many years at Fort Yukon, three or four miles north of the 

 arctic circle in Alaska. It is a wooded country and free from the 

 strong winds that are our greatest handicap in the open, but, so 

 far as mere cold is concerned, the Archdeacon experienced more 

 of it than I or any polar explorer known to me. The United States 



