CHAPTER VII 



NEWS AND PLANS 



WE had noticed in certain places along the coast sledge tracks 

 going west ahead of us. The Eskimos said that the trav- 

 elers were a party consisting of one white man and three 

 Eskimos who had left a whaler caught by the ice and compelled to 

 winter to the eastward, and were on their way to Point Barrow. 



Group after group of Eskimos happened in our way along the 

 coast, and we picked up a good deal of information about conditions 

 to the east as the party traveling ahead dropped a word here and 

 another there. But it was not until we finally got to Cape Smythe 

 that everything was pieced together. 



The Belvedere, under Captain Cottle, carrying a hundred tons 

 of freight for our expedition, had been able to get within about 

 seventy-five miles of Herschel Island, where she had been frozen in 

 a mile from the coast. About fifteen miles farther west the Polar 

 Bear was safe a few hundred yards from the beach. But the Elvira 

 had been wrecked. This was not surprising for the Elvira was one 

 of the vessels considered before the purchase of the Karluk and the 

 reports of my inspectors had shown that she was thoroughly un- 

 sound. Even in the ice-free waters of the Pacific they would not 

 believe her good for more than two or three years. She had now 

 been nipped in the ice, and according to the terms of the insurance 

 policy, which was a heavy one, she had been promptly abandoned. 

 Whalers from another vessel later boarded her and saved her catch 

 of fur and a good many other things of value. Thus the event was 

 auspicious to everybody except possibly to the marine insurance 

 people at San Francisco. 



But most pertinent to us was the information that the Alaska 

 and the Mary Sachs were both safe at CoUinson Point. They, 

 in common with all other ships on the coast, had followed the 

 Alaska practice of going between the land and the ice. Although 

 they had not been able to get as far east as we had hoped, they 

 were at least safe, and we had their supplies to go on with the 

 following year, 



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