STEFANSSON-ANDERSON EXPEDITION 101 
nesting and it was decided to increase the size of the group to include 
not only the Spoonbills, but also the birds that were nesting with them, 
thus reproducing a bird “rookery,” once so characteristic of Florida. 
F. M. CoapmMan. 
THE STEFANSSON-ANDERSON ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 
HE adventures and vicissitudes of an expedition into the Arctic 
regions are well shown in letters recently received from Mr. V. 
Stefansson, who, as already related in the JourRNAL, left New 
York last April to. spend a year and a haif or two years and a half among 
the Eskimo living along the northern coast of the North American 
continent, particularly east of the delta of the Mackenzie River. In 
the October JouRNAL mention was made of Mr. Stefansson’s having 
reached Smith’s Landing, or Fort Smith, on the Slave River early in 
June. He and his associate, Dr. R. M. Anderson, left Fort Smith June 
11, floated down the river in scows, were towed by a small steamer three 
days’ journey across Great Slave Lake and thence down the Mackenzie 
River, arriving on July 2 at Fort Norman, which is at the inflow of Bear 
Lake River. Leaving Dr. Anderson temporarily at Fort Norman, 
Mr. Stefansson was towed in his own whaieboat (obtained on Great 
Slave Lake) down the Mackenzie and up Peel’s River to Fort Macpher- 
son, where he arrived July 6. Nine days later Dr. Anderson joined 
Mr. Stefansson at Fort Macpherson, and on July 16 the two associates 
left for Herschel Island, Arctic Ocean, after securing a second whaleboat. 
‘The narrative may best be continued by quotations from Mr. Stefansson’s 
letters: 
“HERSCHEL ISLAND, August 9, 1908. 
“k* * * * We had rather unfavorable weather and did not reach Herschel 
Island until July 29th, a rather slow passage, although we made every effort 
to hurry. It had been my intention to proceed at once to Flaxman Island 
to see Mr. Leffingwell,’ but two things deterred me,— it was already late 
‘Mr. E. DeK. Leffingwell was a member of the Mikkelsen—Leffingwell Polar Expe- 
dition which went north in 1906 and of which Mr. Stefansson was the ethnologist for 
more than a year. After the expedition dissolved, Mr. Leffingwell remained in the 
North to do geographical] work along the Arctic coast of Alaska. Editor. 
