vi PREFACE 



of unfounded beliefs than any white people with whom I have 

 associated. 



I could see no natural reason why the regions beyond the Eskimo 

 frontier should be devoid of animal life. The fact that the Eskimos 

 said so and the fact that geographies and encyclopaedias continue 

 to make the same assertion, meant little to me. Professionally, I- 

 know the foundations of such assertions, and that encyclopedias 

 do their full share in perpetuating the unfounded beliefs of our 

 ancestors. I satisfied myself, so far as was possible while actually 

 living in the Eskimo country, that the region beyond did not differ 

 from the Eskimo countrj'^ in any essential respect. I concluded the 

 presumption to be that animal life could be found even in the very 

 center of the icy area. This is a point, as explained elsewhere in 

 this book, which lies about 400 miles away from the geographic 

 North Pole in the unknown region north of Alaska. No one had been 

 nearer to the center of the icy area than Peary when he visited the 

 North Pole. Others had concluded from Peary's evidence that since 

 he had seen no animal life at the North Pole or betw^een it and 

 Greenland, the presumption was that for a greater reason there 

 would be no animal life in more- remote (because more distant from 

 navigable waters) ice-covered areas in the region of maximum inac- 

 cessibility.* 



My conclusion was that animal life had not been seen because 

 it had not been looked for and because it existed under the ice where 

 it would be inconspicuous. Hunting seals under thick polar ice 

 resembles hunting as we commonly think of it less than it does pros- 

 pecting. Many people had lived for long periods in Pennsylvania, 

 tilling the soil successfully and considering themselves thoroughly 

 familiar with all local conditions, and nevertheless these people were 

 ignorant of the mineral oil contained in the earth below. Seal hunt- 

 ing, as will appear in that part of the book where the methods are 

 described, is analogous to prospecting for oil. No explorer had had 

 that point of view, and it appeared to me that their failure to 

 discover seals when they were not looking for them did not reflect 

 on their intelligence any more than it reflects on the intelligence of 

 Franklin that he lived for a long time in Pennsylvania and died 

 in ignorance of even the possibility of the Rockefeller fortune and 

 of the other things of more consequence that have hinged upon the 

 discovery of oil in Pennsylvania. 



I already knew the methods of securing seals, and came south 

 in 1912 firm in the belief that I could go into regions where Eskimos 



* See map showing "Pole of Relative Inaccessibility," p. 8. 



