326 The Contract with Five White Men. [October, iser. 



States. Tlieir services were to be of any kind that Hall might 

 require and deem most essential, and they were well informed that 

 their labors would not be light or their dangers small, and that the 

 preservation of their lives would oftentimes depend upon their own 

 exertions, as their food and clothing must be acquired from the icy 

 seas and the wild hunting-grounds of the north. The party of the 

 second part (for the contract was evidently with each man under the 

 approval of the captain of his ship) agreed that in consideration of 

 $500 per year, he would render the services required of him with 

 strict obedience to each and every order of his commander, and 

 would receive such a recompense as he would fairly deserve for faith- 

 fulness, energy, and honest devotion to his work. But neither service 

 nor pay were to be continued longer at the furthest than to the date 

 from which a passage could be taken on a good ship from Repulse 

 Bay in the Fall of 1868. 



From the time of his going into winter quarters, and throughout 

 the following months of October, November, and December, and the 

 first month of the year 1868, Hall seems to have kept no continuous 

 journal. His provision-lists during these months are made out for 

 eight persons at the encampment, showing that the five white men and 

 Ebierbing and Too-koo-li-too, with himself, made up the party. The 

 lists contain in detail the items of Arctic sustenance — of deer necks, 

 heads, ribs, and belly meat, backbone and legs, with tood-noo, walrus- 

 meat and blubber muk-tuk^ and a small quantity of salmon. This 

 provision, in addition to what he drew from the stores received from 

 the whalers fwliicli included a few cans of preserved meat, beef and 

 mutton, with a little dried fruit), would seem to have been ample for 

 the necessities of life ; the footing up of his lists for seventy-three days 



