THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 609 



a fifteen-mile breeze from the southeast most of the day. After 

 reaching land a fifteen-mile breeze from the northeast. I wore 

 only a single thin deerskin shirt with drill snow shirt outside, and a 

 single pair of woolen mittens, and got about as cold as I have ever 

 been. The other clothes were deep in the sled (because it had 

 seemed warm in the morning) and I did not want to stop to get 

 them out, as I knew we would find a snowhouse ready for us. My 

 hands got too cold to thaw my face properly. Froze both cheeks, 

 chin, and throat. Emiu froze his face about as much as I did, 

 and one wrist in addition. All others froze faces more or less, 

 Natkusiak pretty badly. No frostbites serious. My left hand, 

 from the cold, I suppose, was swollen so that the knuckles appeared 

 as depressions when I clinched my hand last night. Now (noon, 

 March 31st) it is still swollen but not so much. Emiu's and Nat- 

 kusiak's wrists are also swollen and so is my right hand, but less. 

 (All of us who suffered did so because of not wanting to stop to 

 put on clothing that we had put into the loads in the morning.) 

 Others wore hea\^ outer clothing and were not even cold. Some 

 of the dogs were slightly frostbitten." 



So far as the cold is concerned this is probably the most serious 

 record of it in any of my diaries, and though it may sound un- 

 pleasant to one who has never tried it, the fact is that none of us 

 minded it this time any more than people mind an uncomfortably 

 hot day in the South. A straightforward account of cold weather 

 sounds dreadful to Southerners; a straightforward account of heat 

 sounds dreadful to Far Northerners. 



On April 5th I sent back Illun, Pikalu and Ulipsinna with two 

 sleds and twenty-nine dogs. It was a novelty to me and good fun 

 to travel with such a large party as we had had up to this time. 

 When all our teams were together it was really like one of the arctic 

 expeditions you read about. At Grassy the returning party were 

 to pick up Alingnak and the women of Natkusiak's camp and carry 

 them south to Liddon Gulf. Two days later we had caught up to 

 Castel's advance party and were all gathered together at the floe 

 edge. Weather conditions were not propitious for sealing and we 

 secured only two. 



So far on our expedition the outlook had often been bad but 

 the event had never turned out quite as badly as we feared. I 

 have seldom been so cheerful over the prospects of a coming year 

 as I was the autumn of 1916 on the return to Melville Island where 

 I found everything had been so admirably done by Storkerson and 

 where fortune had seconded forethought at every turn. But the 



