580 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



no danger. But this was recognized as merely the heartlessness 

 of capitalists who did not care if scores of American citizens starved 

 to death so long as it cost them nothing. There was a newspaper 

 outcry from coast to coast, appeals for the poor imprisoned whalers 

 and denunciations of the ship owners, and eventually Congress 

 sent Lieutenant Jarvis and a special relief expedition driving rein- 

 deer to Point Barrow. When the Coast Guard officials arrived 

 some of the crews seemed on the verge of insubordination and pos- 

 sibly the whaling officers might have had difficulty in controlling 

 them. There was also danger of scurvy. But in this regard the 

 value of the medical advice was probably overrated, for as every 

 one now knows, the medical man of that day had no understanding 

 of the fundamentals of scurvy and prescribed methods which were 

 about as appropriate as the panacea of bleeding was a century 

 earlier. 



But as for starvation, the crews were so near it that they had 

 food to throw away, and actually did throw away tons of fresh 

 meat which they could not transport when they sailed away in 

 the spring. The facts are known to every whaler and traveler who 

 has been on the north coast of Alaska but they have not been 

 generally published, and Congress voted a medal to the "rescuers." 

 It was as heroic an undertaking then as the carrying of mail is 

 to-day to Point Barrow, and that is done three times a winter for 

 the munificent pay of the American postal department. The coast 

 the party traversed between Bering Straits and Point Barrow was 

 settled then as now by Eskimos, except that there are two school 

 houses now on the four hundred-mile stretch. But one thing done 

 was creditable as a performance and led to good, although un- 

 planned results. William T. Lopp drove the reindeer to Barrow 

 under difficult conditions because reindeer driving was new to him 

 and to the country. This drive was useless so far as rescuing any 

 starving men was concerned and it was a pity that any of the ani- 

 mals were killed to make a show of being used to relieve distress, 

 for the remainder became the nucleus of the reindeer industry of 

 northern Alaska which is now making the natives wealthy and 

 Alaska a meat-exporting country. 



Despoiling the Arctic of its heroism is likely to be about as 

 popular as taking candy from a child, and especially in Alaska 

 which is poorer in hero tales than most other sections of the North. 

 It could not well help being poor in them from the preponderance 

 of quiet, competent, and unemotional men there, the whalers, trad- 

 ers and pioneers in search of gold. But in towns such as Nome, and 



