CHAPTER LV 

 f 



WE FIND BERNIER's DEPOT 



WE had long since lost track of the week days, but the newly- 

 Christianized Eskimos keep careful watch on Sundays, 

 most of them for purely religious reasons but a few for 

 reasons which make the forty-four-hour week a burning economic 

 and political question farther south. They told me now that October 

 17th was Sunday, and so we kept it as a day of rest and rejoicing and 

 a sort of celebration. A good part of many ^^ celebration is brag and 

 vainglory and we occupied the day in congratulating ourselves on 

 our fortunate winter bases, the success and thoroughness of Stor- 

 kerson's summer work, and the new triumph of our method of 

 "living off the country," which had enabled us to complete a jour- 

 ney of two hundred and twelve days as measured from Natkusiak's 

 hunting camp at Cape Alfred, left March 10th, to our arrival at 

 his hunting camp at Cape Grassy, reached October 7th. The trip 

 can be made to look a little longer if we figure it from our ship 

 base at the North Star from March 2nd to the return to Storker- 

 son's camp and cessation of travel October 16, 1916, two hundred 

 and twenty-nine days or seven months and nineteen days. 



We had not missed a meal nor had our dogs though there were 

 three or four occasions when they had to sup on old boots or skins. 

 Still I remember distinctly that whenever I saw them eat on these 

 occasions they ate with a relish, and the few pounds of fat they 

 had lost crossing from Borden Island to Melville Island they had 

 picked up since we killed the first ovibos and were now as fat 

 as ever. Of the eight we had when we separated from Cas- 

 tel, seven had arrived home safe and we had lost only poor 

 Jack. There had been discomfort at times, especially in the early 

 summer before we landed on Lougheed Island, and in late September 

 and early October when our clothes were difficult to keep dry be- 

 cause of the hoar frost in the tent, which we had to use as the snow 

 had not hardened enough for house-building. But we all three 

 agreed that we would not mind starting out to-morrow for a simi- 

 lar trip, if to-morrow had been after New Year's with increasing 

 light instead of at the beginning of darkness as now. 



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