THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 189 



They said that were we to land on Alaska we should find a settled 

 coast, but that in Banks Island we had an uninhabited country 

 where game might be scarce ; moreover, our ships were to the south, 

 and were we to return to them we could sail north to Banks Island 

 during the coming summer. Now as to sailing to Banks Island in 

 ships, my objection was that we should be compelled by the ice to 

 skirt the mainland coast part of the way, or at the best make a 

 diagonal course from Herschel Island to Cape Kellett. In doing 

 this we should be sailing through waters that have been sailed by 

 whalers since 1889, while our ice journey along the great circle 

 course to Cape Alfred would take us through territory unsailable 

 and unknown. Exploration of unknown territory was of the high- 

 est importance, and was the main duty assigned us by the Govern- 

 ment. 



But all considerations were outweighed by the dangers of return 

 to Alaska. I believe the chances are at least three in four that any 

 party attempting this late in the month of May from a distance 

 to seaward as great as ours would be swept to the west beyond Point 

 Barrow. If they were on a solid ice floe they might survdve the 

 summer in the ocean east of Wrangel Island, but that also is an 

 explored area and the summer would be wasted. If the floe were 

 to get into the open in the vicinity of Point Hope, wave action 

 might break it into fragments, with the probability if not certainty 

 of a tragic ending. This view has been strengthened, so far as 

 the year 1914 was concerned, by the fact that all whalers and Es- 

 kimos on the north coast of Alaska have told me that that season 

 proved an especially open one and that the inshore ice during the 

 spring was in continual rapid westward motion. This indeed was 

 one of the reasons why our death was so universally assumed among 

 them. They did not conceive of the possibility of our having gone 

 to Banks Island, but felt sure we would attempt a landing on the 

 Alaska coast. Conditions there being exceedingly bad, it was be- 

 lieved that we had either been lost in some hazardous traverse 

 over ice made rotten by the spring thaws, or been drifted into the 

 sea west of Barrow.* 



* This opinion was given added weight by Captain Pedersen, who upon 

 his return to San Francisco gave out a newspaper interview in which, after 

 complimentary references to our ability to live by hunting, he said that our 

 only chance of survival was that we might in the following autumn or spring 

 be able to make a landing on Wrangel Island, the New Siberian Islands, 

 or some other part of northeastern Siberia. This opinion of an ice master 

 who knows more than any one else about sea conditions north of Alaska as 

 encountered by whaling ships, became the chief reason why the eyes of those 

 friends who still had hope of our being alive were turned thousands of 



