700 APPENDIX 



again returning to the southwest; the latter two were seen occasionally 

 all through the summer. Of sea gulls there always was an abundance, 

 either one species or another. I noticed six species in all, first the 

 jaeger gull, the ivoiy gull, the black-winged large gull, the gray-winged 

 large gull, and two species of the smaller gulls of which I do not know 

 the names. Besides these, two species of loons were noticed. 



As with the ducks, in May and August beluga whales were seen 

 going toward the northeast and returning to the southwest. The seal 

 and the polar bear, of course, were always present, the seals in undimin- 

 ishing numbers. The polar bears, however, seemed to get fewer in 

 the latter part of the summer. When returning to shore I found a 

 reason for this, as we met with numbers of them. At the time of the 

 freeze-up they evidently came south to hunt on the large expanses of 

 young ice near shore. From my observations it has been proved that 

 the sea, in the latitudes where we drifted through the summer, teems 

 with life of many different species. With my own eyes I have seen 

 different kinds of fish both in the water and in the stomachs of seals 

 which we had caught. Amphipods and a species of jellyfish commonly 

 known as "whale feed" seemed abundant in the water and also were 

 found in the stomachs of the seals. From what I have seen of condi- 

 tions in that part of the Arctic Ocean, I know that there is no scarcity 

 of food for the seal, the whale or the polar bear and so, of course, no 

 scarcity of food for man. 



THE LEGEND OF THE WESTERN CURRENT 



When I made up my mind to drift instead of going to Prince 

 Patrick Island it was because I believed in the existence of a westward 

 current in the Beaufort Sea which might prevent me from getting 

 there. I had studied all the obtainable data on the subject and it 

 pointed to the existence of a current in a westward direction. So, 

 to prove finally the existence of that current, we started to drift, of 

 course expecting that we would be carried into the area north of Siberia. 

 We had fond hopes even, if the drift were fast enough, of landing on 

 the New Siberian Islands or the Franz Josef Islands. 



One, therefore, can easily imagine how puzzling it was to us to 

 find that for three months, from April 14 to July 13, we drifted 

 steadily towards east before the wind until we reached the longitude of 

 144.5° west of Greenwich. On July 14 the wind changed to the 

 east and in about six weeks we drifted to the northwest till we reached 

 the 151st degree of west longitude. Then the wind changed to the 

 southwest again and we drifted to the northeast, reaching our Farthest 

 North of 74° North latitude on September 3. From then on until 

 October 9, when we started for the shore, we zigzagged back and 

 forth before the wind and at the end of 184 days' drifting we were 70 

 miles north by west of our starting point of April 8, having drifted 



