632 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



directions. There was coal in the depot and we had seen some 

 coal float on the beach farther east. The depot stores were in 

 fair condition. On the basis of these circumstances Noice, who 

 had become a great enthusiast for exploration, proposed that we 

 should spend the summer here and the following winter, making 

 an additional ice journey to the northward in the spring. He had 

 made a similar proposal up in Lougheed Island after we found the 

 coal mine. The idea was attractive and I had thought a good deal 

 about it on my own account, but our dogs were not so good as 

 formerly through the mere fact that the best of them had become 

 old in our service — they had been middle-aged when we got them 

 four years before and a dog of eight is well past his prime. Then 

 there was nothing here out of which we could build sledges and 

 one of ours was now so rickety that we were able to haul on it 

 little but bedding. We usually carried about two hundred pounds 

 of fresh meat with us, provisions for four or five days, and that 

 with the cooking gear and heavier articles was now all on one 

 sled. I was forced to the reluctant conclusion that we had better 

 adhere to the plan of overtaking our ships at Kellett and sailing 

 home. 



There was an alternative which I had seriously considered. 

 When we were on the east coast of Melville Island I asked the 

 men whether they would be willing to cross straight south for the 

 northeast corner of Victoria Island where we would pick up Stor- 

 kerson's records, ascertain if he had finished the mapping and 

 finish it if he had been unable to do so. We would then spend 

 the summer in Victoria Island, cross Dolphin and Union Straits 

 in the fall and traverse that country, with which I was so familiar 

 from the year spent there in 1910-11, to Bear Lake and the Macken- 

 zie and thence out to Edmonton and Winnipeg. Emiu was home- 

 sick for Nome but the two white men agreed willingly. I thought 

 the matter over for three or four days but finally gave it up. 



Because of Emiu's illness we could not leave Dealy Island before 

 the evening of July 4th. Two days later we reached Bernier's 

 house about a mile from Parry's Rock at Winter Harbor. Here 

 we spent two days getting several good sets of observations. We 

 then followed the coast southwest to the vicinity of Cape Providence 

 and took a course which, according to the map, should have brought 

 us to Point John Russell on Banks Island but really bore well east 

 of Peel Point on Victoria Island, for, as our later observations 

 showed, Point Russell is wrongly placed on the map by nearly a 

 full degree of longitude. 



