THE SOUNDLESS LAND 127 



not any hoof-print on the left side or right side. 

 A typical measurement of the span between 

 hoof-prints is twenty-five inches, from front of 

 one hoof to rear of the next in front ; an ordinary 

 hoof- mark measures four- and- a-half inches by 

 seven- and- a-quarter inches. The above of course 

 refers to the track of a single animal. Caribou 

 are much given to follow in Indian-file one after 

 the other, and soon tread down a regular path of 

 footprints in the snow. 



During the next two months I travelled 

 through regions that were wrapped in resolute 

 Arctic winter, vast regions formidably hushed, 

 incalculably desolate ; more completely impover- 

 ished of life and activity than any words can 

 depict. One moved in a soundless land, a land 

 that was deaf and dumb and had no organ of ex- 

 pression ; and one could understand, while living 

 in this place of dead, why men go mad under the 

 awful shadow of utter loneliness, and under the 

 unspoken, fanciful questioning which unmitigated 

 space will prompt and throw back unanswered, 

 touched with a sense of discouraging mockery. 

 In many places there are not even Caribou ; 

 not one single moving* object in a day's trail over 

 dreary snowfields. In such regions, in deep 

 winter when the thermometer is anything from 

 ten to sixty degrees below zero, one's salvation 

 is companionship. At such a time I have learned 

 that it is folly to go beyond the last outpost 

 without a comrade, even if that comrade only 

 be an Indian and there is no finer, more unselfish 

 comrade on a hard trail than just an Indian. 

 Starvation, sickness, frostbite, madness : any of 



