THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 29 



are told by Plutarch that Hannibal's generals had heard much 

 before leaving Carthage of the ugliness of Alpine mountains but 

 that when they came in sight of them the grewsomeness far ex- 

 ceeded their worst fears. Similarly we southerners who have heard 

 much of the horrors of the ice, and who associate it with such 

 tragedies as the wreck of the Titanic or the death through starva- 

 tion of Sir John Franklin's hundred men, are likely to feel about 

 the polar pack when we come in contact with it that same sense 

 of imaginings verified. But after years of friendly dealing with 

 the ice, seeking my food upon its surface or at its margin, walking 

 upon it by day and camping upon it comfortably at night, I am 

 as much at ease among its floating cakes as the Swiss are among 

 the Alps that horrified Hannibal's African generals. I have the 

 feeling when I come to the ice from the open ocean that one native 

 to forests may have when he comes to a wooded country after a 

 journey over the prairie. I imagine Bartlett felt much as I did. 

 I did not ask him. 



I was born and brought up on the prairie, so I am always at 

 home there. I have spent eleven years in close contact with the 

 polar ice and shall always be at home there whenever I am able 

 to get back to it. I am at home also in the big cities, for I got 

 to them before I was yet mature and have lived in them for ten or 

 fifteen years. But so far I have been unable to feel at home either 

 in a forest or in a mountainous country, for my experience with them 

 has never been long enough for me to become acclimated. I do 

 not remember ever having more distinctly the feeling of home- 

 coming than I did when, near Wainwright Inlet, the first line of 

 white appeared upon the horizon. I climbed from the deck well 

 up the rigging to have a good look at the pack. 



While the appearance of the ice was friendly and familiar, it 

 was in another sense not propitious, for it meant delay. The north- 

 west coast of Alaska between Point Hope and Point Barrow is 

 shallow inshore, without a real harbor anywhere. The northerly 

 wind had brought in from afar the ice which three or four days 

 before had been out of sight from the entire coast, as we later 

 learned from the natives. Now it was coming in at a speed of 

 perhaps a mile an hour. It had already struck the coast ahead 

 of us, and as we proceeded the space of open water became narrower 

 vmtil about thirty miles southwest of Point Barrow there was no 

 chance for further progress. Bartlett accordingly put the nose 

 of the ship against a big ice cake, saying to me that now that we 



