THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 227 



that robs the little bird's nest and eats its young; the lemming im- 

 plies the fox, and the footprint of a caribou or an old antler lying 

 bleaching upon the hillside tells not only of the magnificent stag 

 and gamboling fawn, but of the packs of wolves that follow the 

 stag for days across the rolling hills and eventually eat him alive 

 when he falls from exhaustion. (Only in the books of the nature 

 faker is the wolf fleet enough to overtake the caribou after a short 

 rush, and his fangs long and keen enough to cut the jugular vein. 

 If animals have a sense of humor it is a pity they cannot read our 

 popular nature stories or come to see an occasional "Great North 

 Woods" or "God's Country" movie.) 



From the first sight of land our concern had been to get ashore, 

 so that we had left unkilled several seals along the way. Accord- 

 ingly, we landed with no food for the dogs and only about half a 

 meal for ourselves. While we were still a mi^e from shore with the 

 southward slope of Norway Island conveniently spread out ahead, 

 my glasses revealed one wolf, one fox, eight hares, some king eiders. 

 Pacific eiders, old squaw ducks, and three dark geese, one of which 

 on closer approach proved to be a Hutchins. After landing we saw 

 ^ome willow ptarmigan, plovers, Lapland longspurs, snow buntings, 

 M.nd two or three kinds of sandpipers. We found also the exgorgita- 

 tions of owls and saw a few bees and blue-bottle flies. There were 

 no mosquitoes, our later intimate acquaintances on the mainland. 



Caribou tracks were on the beach, and while our side of the 

 island certainly contained no caribou as reviewed from seaward, 

 there might be some on the other slope. So I left the men to make 

 our first camp on shore and to gather pieces of driftwood for the 

 first campfire, and went to the top of the island to get a view of 

 the far side. The island proved to be only about half as large as 

 the Admiralty chart has it, only half as far from the next land 

 east, and with the long axis at about right angles to what it should 

 be by the chart. I ascended the most westerly of the hills, so that 

 turning to the east I had to look first over three miles of the island 

 and beyond -that over three miles of ice to examine what I then 

 thought was the mainland of Banks Island. And it should have 

 been the mainland by the chart, but it proved to be an island about 

 twice the size of Norway Island and much more fertile. That is- 

 and we later named after Captain Peter Bernard of the Sachs. 



In hunting on the grassy plains of the Arctic, a good pair of 

 2;lasses and a knowledge of their use are about as important as the 

 luality of your rifle and the pair of legs that carry you. I have 

 found it as difficult to teach a new man the proper use of field 



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