666 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



where Captain Gonzales left the expedition. We also put off sev- 

 eral of our other men who desired to become trappers there, Pete 

 Lopez, Jim Fiji, and some Eskimos. 



Under the pressure of stating many things in a book that con- 

 tinually tries to become too long I have given insufficient space to 

 many of our good and useful men. Of these, few were more 

 admirable and none more popular than Jim Fiji, or James Asasela, 

 as he writes it on rare occasions. 



When the World's Fair was held in 1893 one of the exhibits 

 was a young man who had grown to maturity in the Samoa Islands 

 and had been brought to Chicago as a part of the exhibit of ''native 

 races." This young man was James Asasela. When the Fair was 

 over he drifted to San Francisco with an idea of getting back to the 

 Samoas. He could not speak much English, so he went down to 

 the water front to see if he could find a ship that looked as if it 

 would take him home. He saw a small sailing ship that had 

 several "Kanakas" aboard, natives of the Hawaii Islands. He 

 could not speak to these Hawaiians but he knew what people and 

 country they belonged to, so he went to the officers of this ship 

 and asked for a job, for he thought they were sailing for the Hawaii 

 Islands. Two or three months later he found himself in the Arctic. 

 Jim Fiji from the tropics now had to spend the winter with a whaler 

 at Herschel Island, two hundred miles north of the arctic circle, 

 on the north coast of Canada. He found it hard, for he did not 

 know how to take care of himself in the cold. He froze his face 

 and his fingers and shivered and was miserable, and he has told 

 me that he would have given anything to be out of it and home. 

 But it was a three-years' voyage, and during the next two years 

 he learned how to clothe himself properly and how to protect him- 

 self from frost, and he liked the last year so well that when the 

 vessel got down to San Francisco he immediately shipped on an- 

 other whaler to go north again. And at the end of this three-year 

 voyage he liked the north so well that when the ship turned home 

 he asked permission of the captain to remain behind. 



Jim Fiji had lived in that country ever since, trapping and occa- 

 sionally working for whalers or traders, and he worked three years 

 for us on this expedition. I have known him since 1906 as one 

 of the finest men in the North, and consider him one of my good 

 friends. He has been industrious and frugal, has caught many 

 foxes, has sold his furs at favorable prices, and now he has money 

 in the bank. The amount is a subject on which he is reticent, for 

 he has in that respect the instincts of a miser. He will give you 



