554 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



ing ridges toward evening. Saw the Leffingwell Crags during the 

 day. Fog in the evening but I take it our camp is a little south 

 of Jcnness Island. 



"September 20: Started 9:50 A. M. and the team half an hour 

 later. Our camp proved to have been about six miles south of 

 Jenness Island. About three miles south of that island we found 

 a big log (apparently driftwood). It was only five or eight feet 

 above sea level but about two hundred yards inland. It was nearly 

 my fathom half around it (circumference eleven or twelve feet). 

 It seems to me this is the biggest log I ever saw in the Arctic 

 and probably not the same sort of wood as comes down the Macken- 

 zie River. The piece is about seventy-five feet long (from the 

 roots to where it is broken at a diameter of eighteen inches) and 

 lies entirely on top of the ground. It is so rotten you can break it 

 by pulling on its roots, but so dry that I thought we could burn it. 

 Propped up on end several pieces (I was able to break out of the 

 log with my hands, to attract the attention of the men so they would 

 pick it up for fuel, for this was the first piece of driftwood we had 

 found all summer) . The vegetation became more abundant to-day 

 but changed from prevailingly grass to prevailingly moss and 

 lichens. Saw several caribou tracks two or three days old near 

 the drift log. I went five miles inland from there to get a view from 

 a high hill two miles northwest from which I saw two cows and 

 two calves which I shot. 



"Skinned one cow and calf and hurried to the coast, for we had 

 only fifteen pounds of food on hand and I had told the men to 

 feed caribou skins to the dogs if I were not home by dark. These 

 were valuable skins and I was anxious to get home with meat for 

 the dogs' supper before the skins were fed to them. Took a north- 

 west course and came to the coast about four miles north of Jenness 

 Island. Saw no traces of sled tracks and concluded camp was 

 farther south. Walked to Jenness Island and found sled had gone 

 offshore there into the rough ice to get across a bight in the coast 

 that is about six or seven miles across and a mile or so deep. I 

 had not thought this a possible course for them to take, for there 

 is beautiful level young ice everywhere along shore. Followed the 

 sled trail and found it bad walking. Sled had also gone slowly and 

 with difficulty, as the trail showed. Half across the bay they had 

 realized their mistake and had cut inshore, reaching the level ice 

 about two hundred yards north of where I had reached it coming 

 from inland. All this delayed me two and a half hours and I got 

 to camp half an hour after the dogs had eaten the caribou skins. 



