THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 625 



In the jar along with this record was a newspaper cutting de- 

 voted to an account of the outfitting of Captain Bernier's expedi- 

 tion. This was from some Montreal or Quebec paper and the 

 date was probably about May 13, 1908, for that day is mentioned 

 in the article as roughly contemporary with the writing of it. 

 On the back happened to be another news item. It was a tele- 

 graphic despatch from, England quoting Sir Edward Grey as saying 

 in Parliament that "an entente between England and Russia would 

 make it practically impossible for any other European powers to 

 go to war with each other." This was interesting reading in June, 

 1917. 



We were now in the regular sailing waters which we should have 

 traversed eastward through Barrow Strait and Lancaster Sound 

 to the Atlantic had the Bear come to Melville Island the previous 

 summer. On the map this looks like a roundabout and long route, 

 but experience has proved it to be one of the easiest in the Arctic. 

 Even in the old days of sailing ships, few had any great difficulty 

 in getting in to Melville Island or out again. Even one which was 

 abandoned in Melville Sound under circumstances for which the 

 commanding officer has been greatly criticized, drifted safely, though 

 there was no one to guide or take care, and was picked up in fair 

 condition by an American whaler in BaSin Bay the following year. 

 This was one of two ships abandoned under a policy of mistaken 

 caution, and the other one is the only ship, so far as I know, that 

 has been lost in these waters. 



Reflections passed often among us of how pleasant it would 

 have been to know that the Bear was waiting for us at Dealy Island 

 or Winter Harbor. Summer had come and there was no doubt that 

 the journey across Melville Sound to Banks Island where we had 

 to go as one result of the Bear's not coming to us, would be exceed- 

 ingly unpleasant through the deep water and slush. 



These considerations appealed to Knight with particular force, 

 for the stories he had heard of wading through ice water made the 

 prospect even more forbidding to him than it did to the rest of us. 

 So often a description of "hardship" is more impressive than the 

 experience itself. It is those who have never fasted who are 

 afraid of being hungry, and those who have never frozen their 

 faces who are in the greatest dread of doing so. His thoughts 

 eventually loosened Knight's tongue as to various things he had 

 hitherto kept partly or wholly secret, and he gave us now at last 

 the full story of what had happened the previous summer on the 

 Polar Bear. 



