THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 615 



amount of fresh meat and fish on the Bear. On the way north 

 with Gonzales, Knight had lived entirely on groceries and since 

 joining me he had lived in the main on groceries and dried meat. 

 It was reasonable to suppose that his ailment was the same as 

 that of Noice. 



Under the belief that the pemmican found at Winter Harbor 

 was a more condensed food than the dried meat, Castel's party 

 had been eating dried meat and saving pemmican. For similar 

 reasons we now found ourselves with nothing on hand that had any 

 antiscorbutic properties. The seals killed at the shore lead would 

 have cured three men of scurvy many times over, providing the 

 meat had been eaten raw or underdone, but (not suspecting that 

 scurvy was pending) I had had them fed to the dogs because the 

 groceries and dried meat were more portable. 



It was before I diagnosed the cases of Noice and Knight as 

 actual scurvy that on April 26th [1917] I made up my mind to turn 

 back, although I did so on the basis of their evident indisposition 

 which seemed serious when taken together with the lack of seals. 

 When I realized the disease was scurvy, which was the same evening, 

 I saw that the situation was serious. The nearest land was Cape 

 Isachsen, some one hundred and twenty-five miles away, where the 

 shore flloe promised seals whenever the weather was suitable, and 

 where caribou were to be expected on the land. It was six or seven 

 hundred miles to our base at Kellett or to the Eskimos of Victoria 

 Island, although that consideration is really not material, for it was 

 unthinkable that one could go so far before stopping to get the men 

 well. 



At first we thought we might be able to follow our trail towards 

 Borden Island and that the ease of doing so would make up for its 

 greater distance, but at the end of two days we found keeping the 

 trail to be impossible, not because we could not find it (for there 

 had not been a great deal of ice movement) but because there had 

 been so much pressure that heavy ridges or open water lay across 

 it, compelling us to go several miles to one side, with the result 

 that we lost too much time. 



We now made up our minds to strike for Isachsen and made 

 steady progress towards it, although a little slower each day as the 

 disease developed and the men weakened. The weather was very 

 bad for sealing, thick and blizzards. One seal was seen and fired 

 at by Noice but not secured. Some days brought special difficul- 

 ties. May 4th, for instance, we spent eight hours of hard work in 

 cutting loose a corner of ice to make a raft for ferrying across 



