648 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



cast of what he intended but also an agreement with the family 

 that they should be home at their own trapping camp thirty 

 days after he left. 



The distance from Kellett to our Liddon Gulf camp by the 

 route they would have to follow around the west and north ends 

 of Banks Island cannot be given exactly, but is between three and 

 four hundred miles. The Captain had had much experience with 

 sledge traveling in Alaska where he had made trips of thousands 

 of miles, and he failed to realize the different conditions under 

 which he would now have to work. To him it seemed obvious, 

 as he told the Eskimos, that he would be able to reach our camp 

 in from ten to fifteen days. In Alaska he had often made two 

 or three times that distance in the same length of time. Thomsen 

 knew the road and where to find the camp, and there is no doubt 

 that both of them looked upon the trip as a safe and easy one. 



In Alaska where Captain Bernard had been, the standard dog 

 ration, according to what he told me, is bacon and rice. They 

 had the rice but not the bacon, and concluded rightly that seal 

 blubber would do as well. When they started they had blubber and 

 rice equivalent to a fifteen days' Alaskan ration for eighteen dogs. 

 They would make a fire each night, cook the rice and feed that 

 with blubber to the dogs. 



They drove the eighteen dogs in two equal teams, the second 

 team pulling two sledges, one hitched behind the other. How 

 sadly they had miscalculated everything was forecast by the fact 

 (as the Eskimos told me later) that while the dogs started off 

 on a run, they slowed down to a walk within the first half mile 

 while they were still in sight from the house. 



Beyond the three sledges, it is impossible to say what loads 

 there were but they seem to have been heavy. Apparently they 

 took all the mail, both letters and packages, and even some new 

 books that friends had sent in to me. There were also presents for 

 the other men in Melville Island, boxes of cigars, packages of 

 candy, and even two quarts of whisky. In some way Bernard had 

 formed the opinion that the Bear had not attempted to go to 

 Melville Island, and what he took seems to have been selected on 

 the basis of our having nothing there except what we had when 

 Thomsen left. They were bringing carpenter tools, canvas for 

 the sled-boat cover, material for dog harness, and, as I have said, 

 many other things the amount and character of which we shall 

 never know, for the Eskimos paid little attention to what was being 



