670 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



for the work, nor has Storkerson, nor any of the other men who 

 helped me. Nor has Noice any special qualifications for it except 

 the imagination to see its value and interest. There are few men 

 in civilized occupations to-day who are finding their work as con- 

 genial or who will tell you with equal enthusiasm that they have 

 had a bully time. Even were he to bring home no surveys nor 

 scientific information, properly so called, he would still be a pio- 

 neer, a less sanguinary but comparably useful Daniel Boone, open- 

 ing new lands to the frontiersmen who bring commercial devel- 

 opment in the wake of the pioneer. There may no longer be a 

 Far West but there is a Far North with the same nebulous and 

 glamorous future within which shall rise stately cities and empires 

 of productivity. 



We got to Herschel Island September 7th, 1917. Both there and 

 at Cape Bathurst we had heard much talk about how bad the ice 

 conditions had been, and most people seemed sure that we could 

 not get out this season. In case this should prove true we took 

 aboard from the Police storehouse certain supplies belonging to the 

 expedition and purchased enough more from the Hudson's Bay Com- 

 pany store to make about half enough food should we be com- 

 pelled to winter. We paid off at Herschel Island most of our 

 Eskimos and also William Seymour, the first ofiicer of the Bear, 

 who intended to spend the winter there. Indeed, Mr. Seymour 

 lives in the Arctic rather than anywhere else. We now had Hadley 

 for master and Castel and Masik for first and second officers. Stor- 

 kerson, who had for a long time been in a sense our most important 

 man, never had an official position aboard the ships, because the 

 work of the ships seemed to me entirely secondary to that of sledge 

 travel. He is an excellent sailor, well fitted for a ship's command, 

 and this was one of my serious errors in tactics, for I can now see 

 that many things would have gone better had I given him an official 

 (although to my mind an empty) rank corresponding to his ability 

 and his usefulness. 



After two or three days at Herschel Island we proceeded to the 

 trading station of the H. Liebes and Company, just west of the 

 International Boundary, a post under the charge of Thomas Gor- 

 don, one of the best known men in the North and for many years 

 a resident of the vicinity of Point Barrow* 



We had heard something of the movements of the Herman that 

 summer but Gordon gave the story more fully. She had tried her 



* For several references to Mr. Gordon, see index of "My Life With the 

 Eskimo." 



