668 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



out; some were willing or anxious to turn from exploratory work 

 to the more lucrative occupations of trapping and trading; but a 

 few were genuinely reluctant and urged me to continue another 

 year. But these were merely the same type of proposals which 

 I had vetoed when Noice made them in Melville Island. I did 

 consider staying for a year with just my three men and two teams, 

 for the expense would have been little and the interest considerable. 

 We had already maintained ourselves a year and a half away from 

 useful contact with our ships, and extending this period by another 

 year would have emphasized further what our whole work goes 

 to emphasize; that men who understand conditions can travel al- 

 most if not quite where they like and stay as long as they will 

 in the Arctic with safety and comfort. It had always been my 

 intention to get the expensive ships and their large crews off the 

 payroll of the expedition, and I saw no reason now for keeping 

 the ship another year. Neither did I think that the Government 

 would approve of our doing so under war conditions, for we had 

 the news at Cape Bathurst that the fighting was continuous on 

 every front, the resources of every nation strained and the issue 

 still doubtful. In fact, it was only then that we realized that the 

 struggle was likely to continue indefinitely. Before this time we 

 had always supposed that each next arrival of news would tell that 

 it was over. This was our third news of the war. The other two 

 occasions were when Captain Lane broke it to us at Kellett in 

 August, 1915, and when Captain Gonzales brought to Melville 

 Island the spring of 1917 what news the Challenge had given him 

 the previous fall. 



Noice was the most enthusiastic of all about continuing. When 

 he found there was no hope of our staying he thought of the plan 

 of buying the Challenge, which he knew would be of no further use 

 to us. 



There was at Cape Bathurst an old friend of mine, A. A. Carroll, 

 whom I had first met on my second journey down the Mackenzie 

 River in 1908, when he was intending to prospect for gold on the 

 Liard and elsewhere west of the Mackenzie. He was now asso- 

 ciated with another friend. Colonel J. K. Cornwall, of Edmonton, 

 who since long before my time has been one of the most prominent 

 figures in the "North" as that term is understood in central Canada 

 — the Mackenzie and Peace River basins. Cornwall was now 

 head of a large fur trading company which Carroll was represent- 

 ing on a sort of trade reconnoitering journey to Coronation Gulf. 

 I was able to tell Noice that Carroll would probably be an agree- 



