348 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



"June SO, Wednesday: Started (to hunt ahead) 10:30 P. M. 

 and the sleds followed about 11 P. M. (June 29th). Camped about 

 6 A. M. (June 30th) on the north shore of Marie Bay. Distance 

 traveled about six miles. At about 1:30 A. M. I went to the 

 top of a 400-foot hill half a mile inland to have a look at the bay, 

 as the going was execrable — slush two to four inches above the bot- 

 toms of the sled basket in many places. Saw from this hill two 

 polar cattle. I have never wanted to lend a hand in the extermina- 

 tion of these patriarchal remnants of a race, but we had only one 

 meal of seal meat for the dogs, two meals for ourselves . . . besides 

 blubber and other fat. I therefore had to shoot these poor fel- 

 lows. They proved old bulls. We camped on the shore of the bay 

 abreast of the hill and fetched the meat in two loads, sledding 

 over bare ground half the way. Seals are difficult to get now, as 

 one does not like to crawl snake- fashion through eight or ten inches 

 of ice water." 



In a way it was lucky that these were very old bulls for other- 

 wise I might have disbelieved entirely the story that they have 

 an odor or a taste reminding one of the perfume of musk. I re- 

 member quite well my mother's silver box of musk she inherited 

 from her grandmother, with the odor still there ^fter more than 

 threescore years. This archaic perfume was therefore known to 

 me, but I did not notice any musk odor about the animals when 

 skinning them. Ole had shed most of his civilized tastes so far as 

 meat was concerned, but he still retained a fondness for kidneys 

 that Thomsen shared. These two saved the kidneys which we 

 might otherwise have fed to the dogs, and boiled them with our 

 first potful of meat. In the cooking we noticed an odor resembling 

 musk, enough to be identified when coming from an animal named 

 "musk-ox." The meat itself had a slight pungent flavor, although 

 we agreed it was not a disagreeable flavor. But Thomsen and Ole 

 reported that the kidneys were remarkably strong; I think they 

 threw pieces of them away. I did not realize it at the time but 

 later from repeated cookings of their beef where kidneys were never 

 put in the pot, I feel certain that the odor and taste in this one 

 instance must have come from the kidneys. 



In later years when we had to eat a good deal of ovibos beef, 

 some Eskimo women in our parties claimed to be able to smell a 

 peculiar odor about it but it was usually not noticeable to the 

 Eskimo men nor, so far as I know, to any of the whites. 



From this time on as we proceeded south along the coast we 

 saw between twenty and thirty cattle, although we never took 



