THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 651 



Two days' journey west of Mercy Bay they found the middle 

 portion of a sled. Evidently Bernard had been forced to lighten 

 up. First he had taken an axe and chopped the rear third off his 

 fourteen-foot sled, but the pieces must have been deeply snowed 

 over, for Castel never found them. Here was the middle third, 

 showing at both ends that the sled had been chopped through with 

 an axe and the shoeing then filed off. 



A little west of this Castel came to a hard snowdrift with many 

 fox tracks around and with some small fragments of caribou skin 

 scattered over the snow. The fox had been digging a hole in the 

 drift and underneath was evidently the caribou from which the 

 fragments had come. Charlie digging with a shovel came upon 

 something white and smooth, and cried to Castel that Bernard's 

 party had not been so short of food, after all. But what he had 

 taken for the white skin of a piece of salt pork turned out to be 

 the shoulder of Thomsen. 



When the snow had been cleared away his body was found 

 there, lying on its side as if he had gone quietly to sleep. The 

 face did not appear emaciated, which was one reason why they 

 felt sure he had not died of actual starvation, and there were 

 other proofs to the same effect. The hands were bare but this 

 did not signify anything, for men lost in a snowstorm who struggle 

 along till they eventually freeze to death often throw away their 

 mittens and remove their coats. It is commonly believed that this 

 is because they are actually warm from their exertions, but it may 

 be that it is merely an evidence of a mind no longer sane. On one 

 foot was the ordinary type of boot but on the other a house slipper, 

 one of a pair that Mrs. Thomsen had made for him to bring to me 

 as a Christmas present. 



On the whole, the evidence leads me to think that Bernard and 

 Thomsen were in a camp, probably at night and in a heavy bliz- 

 zard. Thomsen had taken off his boots perhaps to dry or mend 

 them, when some occasion arose for going out. He put on one boot 

 and perhaps because he was sewing the other, he slipped on one of 

 my slippers, intending merely to step outdoors. But when one goes 

 outdoors in a blizzard the camp becomes invisible at arm's length. 

 I have heard several stories of Eskimos who have intended to step 

 away from the house but a yard or two but who have never found 

 their camps again and have even frozen to death. This is prob- 

 ably what happened to Thomsen. When he failed to get back into 

 the camp he probably wandered for five or ten miles before the end 

 came. That he died a long way from the camp we infer from the 



