CHAPTER LVI 



THE FOURTH MIDWINTER, 1916-17 



THE departure of Storkerson, Castel, Noice and Emiu for Cape 

 Grassy was made on the last day of October. They had two 

 sledges loaded with seven hundred pounds each of dried meat 

 and seal oil in addition to camping gear and some fresh meat in- 

 tended for dog feed. Their program was threefold. They were to 

 build a line of snow camps which could be used as roadhouses on the 

 trips that we expected to make back and forth during the winter. 

 They were also to get this much dried meat forward to Grassy ; and, 

 finally, they were to establish Castel in charge of that place from 

 which he would continue any useful operations possible. If there 

 still remained in the field any ovibos meat that Natkusiak had not 

 brought home, this was to be gathered at Grassy. Natkusiak with 

 the sled he had broken the previous summer was to come down 

 to Winter Harbor where, through the fortunate find of iron and 

 hard wood left by Captain Bernier, we should now be able to 

 repair it. On the way north Storkerson's teams would pick up 

 the groceries and kerosene brought from Bernier's cache and left 

 a few days before near the foot of Liddon Gulf. 



The loads that Storkerson took were exceptionally heavy, con- 

 sidering that many of his dogs were small. His object was to get 

 to Grassy in time to return by the next full moon. 



Charlie's hand healed presently and he and Lopez kept steadily 

 at work hauling home the meat of the thirty-eight ovibos killed 

 October 26th, while I worked up the information secured during 

 the preceding spring and summer, and recorded ethnological in- 

 formation obtained chiefly from Mrs. Lopez. She was a good in- 

 formant and told much about the folklore and practices of her peo- 

 ple that interested me. But one day she told things about her 

 husband that interested me quite as much. 



It is not easy to tell how children pick up prejudices against 

 certain foods, but such a prejudice is ordinarily tenaciously re- 

 tained. Until I was twenty-seven I had the belief about myself 

 that I could not eat fish and felt certain that its taste was ob- 



590 



