THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 85 



peculiar environment such as a desert, the ocean, or the Arctic, be- 

 fore one can judge correctly between the merely spectacular and the 

 really difficult. Here were two keen young men who had been lost 

 in admiration over the elementary trick of using snowdrifts as a com- 

 pass in crossing a forty-mile bay, and who could see nothing inter- 

 esting or particularly worth explaining in the comparatively credit- 

 able feat of finding a camp in darkness under the conditions I have 

 just described. 



In my whole arctic experience there is nothing of which I am 

 more tempted to brag than of these eight or nine hours during which 

 I groped ahead amid falling and drifting snow through dark- 

 ness, never doubting that every step brought me nearer to a camp 

 that I could not see till I was within five yards of it. Every now 

 and then I had to dig deep pits with my hunting knife to see if 

 I was on land or ice. I never dared try to follow the shoreline 

 exactly for I never knew when I should come to the camp and 

 pass it unnoticed. So that no matter which way the coast line 

 trended I always zigzagged it, groping my way inland and digging 

 till I found grass or soil, then groping my way seaward till my dig- 

 ging revealed ice. I knew the camp was not far away if I only 

 could walk straight to it, but I also knew that though I was almost 

 sure to be able to figure out its direction, I never could figure out 

 its exact location. Each time that impatience whispered to me, 

 "Make a shot at it, you might hit it," discretion answered, "Yes, but 

 if you miss once you never will know if camp lies to the right or to 

 the left, ahead of you or behind. Now you know it is ahead 

 and that you will inevitably find it at last. You will never for- 

 give yourself if you allow yourself to get lost when you needn't." 



And so I kept on, groping, zigzagging, digging, now to find earth 

 and now to find sea, and I got home. But the trouble is that when I 

 want to brag about it nobody seems to see the importance of the 

 achievement as I do. 



After my lecture and its comparative failure, we seemed about 

 to commence a discussion of whether I had or had not been lost 

 when McConnell remarked that he and the Eskimo had been unable 

 to discover the whale carcass. He confided to me later that the 

 Eskimo had not seemed very anxious to find it. They had followed 

 the trail for awhile and when McConnell could no longer see it he 

 had assumed that Angutitsiak could, for he then retained his child- 

 like faith in the infallibility in such matters of the Eskimos. But 

 when after awhile he asked the Eskimo where the trail was, he 

 answered that he had lost it long ago but was hoping to find it again. 



