APPENDIX 713 



to Shipwreck Camp to get all the food we needed and take it ashore 

 at our leisure. When on our way back from this inspection we saw the 

 Captain coming from the north. I walked ahead to meet him and tell 

 how things were going. After his party had camped we walked back 

 to the ridge to look at things, and concluded to start cutting a .road the 

 next morning if the movement had stopped. 



Next morning all hands pitched in with everything they could 

 work with. I now told the Captain I thought it would be a good idea 

 to send a couple of sleds back to Shipwreck Camp and rush some grub 

 over the ridge and we could return from the beach and get it at any 

 time. The Captain did not see it that way. He said he didn't want to 

 waste any time as he wanted to get away from Wrangel Island as soon 

 as possible and that we could later make a trip from the beach back 

 to Shipwreck Camp, I could not understand this, for his plan was 

 that we should live in Wrangel Island on pemmican and we did not 

 have .rations of a pound of pemmican a day for more than a month. 

 Two or three hours later he changed his mind, came to me and told 

 me to quit work and get ready to go back to Shipwreck Camp in the 

 morning with Chafe and McKinlay and three dog teams to bring three 

 cases of gasoline, sixteen hundred pounds of pemmican and nothing else. 



We started next morning and, arrived at Shipwreck Camp at 6 P. M. 

 I should judge it was forty miles. Next day we loaded the sleds 

 and fed the dogs all the Hudson's Bay pemmican they could eat. They 

 had been working on a pound a day of Underwood pemmican, which 

 was a starvation ration, and they were now nothing but a frame of 

 bones, poor things. We loaded the sleds with Hudson's Bay pemmican, 

 as everybody but the Captain liked that the best, and next morning 

 we started on the return journey. The dogs were pretty weak with 

 their previous starvation, so we later had to throw away about one 

 hundred pounds from each load, and we traveled pretty slow at that. 

 It took us three days to cover on the .return journey what we had 

 made in one day coming out. 



On the second day about three P. M. I was behind the team when 

 my dogs stopped, turned in their tracks, and commenced growling, their 

 hair standing up stiff. I looked behind me and there was a bear about 

 six feet from the sled. If the dogs hadn't smelt it I should never 

 have known what hit me, I guess. They made a break for him and 

 he backed off a few feet, giving me a chance to get my gun and give 

 it to him in the head. We found him about ten feet from tip to tip, 

 with three inches of blubber. We made camp, for it was getting 

 dusk. 



While I was tinkering at the camp and the other boys were cooking 

 tea the dogs commenced a racket. I looked up and there was a big 

 bear alongside the sled between me and it, sitting on his haunches and 

 making passes at the dogs, trying to hit them. I ran around the sled 

 and got my rifle, which was about four feet from the bear. We were 



