THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 281 



but if you have to follow about a good deal, or if it is a trail you 

 come upon rather than the game itself and you follow the trail, 

 then it is not so easy to lay down the rules for getting back. 

 Everything can, however, be summarized by saying that you must 

 continually memorize your course; and if you do this it is a matter 

 of angles to determine the course you must eventually take when 

 you start for home. 



This simple outline of our procedure in a storm, and in fact at 

 all other times when direct vision will not serve, will show at once 

 why it is that a white man of trained mind can find his way home 

 so frequently where an Eskimo gets lost and has to camp and wait 

 for clear weather. 



In the hunt under discussion I walked about three miles into the 

 wind, then three miles to one side and back to camp without seeing 

 any sign of game. But Natkusiak had better luck. Within two 

 or three hours we knew that this must be so, otherwise he would 

 have been back; and sure enough, just as daylight was disappear- 

 ing he returned with an account of seeing about thirty caribou and 

 killing and skinning seventeen. Wolves were very numerous at 

 this time and we frequently saw them in bands of ten or less, and 

 our first concern was to get the meat of these deer home. By the 

 next evening we had more than three-quarters of it safe, although 

 the wolves did get some. When the meat had been gathered, 

 Natkusiak and I again hunted but in clearer weather. This time 

 the luck was reversed; he got no deer, while I secured an entire 

 band of tv/enty-three in twenty-seven shots. 



It must not be supposed that killing twenty-three caribou in 

 twenty-seven shots is remarkable. This will appear when you see 

 how it was done. To begin with, my powerful field-glasses sighted 

 the band at seven or eight miles. I advanced to within about a 

 mile of them, climbed a hill much higher than the rest of the coun- 

 try, and used half an hour memorizing the topography. There 

 were various small hills and hollows and creek-beds here and there, 

 with branches in varied directions. All this could be studied from 

 the elevation. The main difficulty was to remember the important 

 details after you had descended into the lower country, where 

 everything on closer view looked different. The wind was fairly 

 steady and I made the approach from leeward. But I found when 

 I got within half a mile of the deer that they had moved to the 

 top of a ridge and were feeding along the top about sidewise to the 

 wind. There was no cover by which they could be directly ap- 



