THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 81 



them with the hands. Then, having determined either the N.E. 

 or the S.W. drifts, the whole remaining problem is to cross every 

 such drift at an angle of about forty-five degrees, ignoring all the 

 other drifts. By doing this you are really traveling the compass 

 course S.E., which takes you from our starting point on the west 

 side of Harrison Bay towards a gap about four miles wide between 

 the mainland and the Jones Islands on the east edge of the Bay. 

 I knew if I erred by going too much to the right I should run the 

 danger of getting tangled in the grassy mudflats of the Colville River 

 where the traveling is very bad on account of the soft snow in the 

 tall grass. So I made sure that if I did err it should be by going too 

 much to the left, in which case again I would strike the rough ice 

 outside of the Jones Islands. 



This was a two days' journey made largely in thick weather, 

 and there was such chance for error that it was largely a matter of 

 luck, although the reasoning and method were correct, which made 

 me strike, as McConnell has said, within a few hundred yards of 

 the desired place. However, I did not strike quite as close as he 

 thought. I had noted some time before we got across the bay 

 certain knobs of rough ice which indicated that I was a little too 

 far to seaward and so I turned slightly to the right. 



There was also the performance which impressed McConnell and 

 Wilkins (and which Wilkins has since written about) of announcing 

 to them in advance, a day or two after this, when we were in thick 

 weather and when the coast appeared to them to be absolutely fea- 

 tureless, that in a mile or so we would arrive at a platform cache 

 which I had seen some years before. This was merely a Sherlock 

 Holmes trick, for the coast was not featureless but was merely 

 featureless to their inexperienced observation. I had been up and 

 down it so often that I knew every cut-bank, and my last journey 

 had been only a year before so that the topography wag still vivid. 

 To forecast your arrival at an ancient Eskimo camp a mile after 

 passing a creek mouth is no more wonderful than knowing that a 

 fifteen-minute walk will take you to the Flatiron Building from 

 the Washington Arch. 



When we got as far ^s the mouth of the Shagavanaktok River 

 we had a series of trivial though rather instructive adventures. We 

 came upon a sled trail running to seaward and followed it ashore to 

 a camp the characteristics of which told me two things: One was 

 that it belonged to my former traveling companion, Natkusiak,* 



*See "Life With the Eskimo." Natkusiak was with me most of the four 

 years covered by that book. 



