CHAPTER XXIII 



NOW we come to notes about the Arctic regions, 

 whales and bears, promised in the preface to this 

 collection of spun yarn, as a sailor-man might call it. 



Long ago the writer, as a very small boy, vowed to go North 

 and bring back bearskins. His instructress failed to excite his 

 interest in short sentences, such as "THE CAT ATE THE RAT," 

 so she gave him a little square green book by Ballantyne, 

 called "Fast in the Ice," and he at once made rapid pro- 

 gress, and he promised his instructress that he would go to 

 Greenland some day and bring her white bearskins now he 

 has got them ; but it is too late ! 



With this brief introduction we come to the subject of a 

 little North Polar expedition we arranged this year (1913), six 

 of us, to hunt for whales, musk oxen, walrus, seals and bears, 

 or anything else of value in the way of heads or furs, which 

 we could find. 



I need not go into the financial aspect of the concern, 

 but I may say my principal object was to study the Arctic 

 regions as compared with the Antarctic and to make pictures 

 of the northern ice, and animal life. 



Dr W. S. Bruce, my companion of long ago in the Antarctic, 

 came to see us off at the Waverley Station, and gave me a 

 volume by that very remarkable Englishman, the whaler 

 Scoresby, a scientist and whaler of the Arctic. That and Dr 

 Bruce's own splendid book of reference on the Antarctic and 

 Arctic ("Polar Research"), and my friend Captain Trolle's 

 work on the Danish expedition to East Greenland, formed 

 our Arctic library. Trolle's description of the Danish ex- 

 pedition came in particularly well, as our intention was to 

 visit the part of North-East Greenland, north and east of 

 Shannon Island, which they charted in 1906-1908, and where, 

 alas ! they left their first leader, Captain Mylius Erichsen. 



" We," I had better say here, will often stand in these notes 

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