756 APPENDIX 



of the Northern party, and of the progress of their operations up to 

 May 5, 1916. At the time Wilkins left in May, Stefansson contem- 

 plated carrying on his travels on the northern islands until 1917, the 

 Polar Bear having been directed to move its base to Winter Harbor, 

 Melville Island, to spend the winter of 1916-17, with the possibility of 

 the party remaining in the Arctic until 1918. The Northern party 

 was stated to have provisions for one or two years more, and were 

 killing and storing away large numbers of caribou and ovibos on Mel- 

 ville Island in the spring of 1916. Quite a number of their engaged 

 western Eskimo hunters had been sent up to Melville Island early in 

 the spring to shoot game for the party's meat supply. 



The remainder of June and the early part of July were spent in 

 completing collections in the vicinity of Bernard Harbor, and assembling 

 and packing specimens, stores and equipment for shipment out of the 

 Arctic. Space had to be economized on the Alaska going out, as far 

 as Herschel Island, as we had to bring out twenty-seven people, viz., 

 eleven white men, including six members of the scientific staff, a crew 

 of three, and two members of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police; 

 fourteen Eskimo employees, seven men, three women, and four children ; 

 and two Eskimos held by the Mounted Police for homicide. In addi- 

 tion to this we had to take the Eskimos' personal camp gear and dogs, 

 stores for paying off native employees at Baillie Island and Herschel 

 Island, and enough reserve provisions to provide for the wintering of 

 as many men as might remain with the Alaska to take care of the vessel 

 and bring her out the next year in case we should be prevented by ice 

 conditions from sailing from Dolphin and Union Strait to Nome in 

 the summer and autumn of 1916. I also thought it necessary, for the 

 same reason, to keep the skin umiak, two sleds, and two teams of dogs 

 on board at least as far as Point Barrow, Alaska. 



In September, 1915, Corporal W. V. Bruce, R. N. W. M. P., came 

 in from Herschel Island, on the return trip of the Alaska, to work on 

 the case of the disappearance of Father Rouvier, O. M. I., and Father 

 LeRoux, O. M. I., from the Mission at Fort Norman, who had gone 

 into the country northeast of Great Bear Lake in 1913, and had not 

 been heard of since. Corporal Bruce had spent the winter working 

 on the case, and with the assistance of various members of the expe- 

 dition, gained considerable information and recovered a quantity of 

 the personal effects of the missing fathers as well as some property 

 which presumably belonged to Messrs. Radford and Street, who were 

 killed by Eskimos in Bathurst Inlet in 1912. In May, 1916, Inspector 

 Charles D. LaNauze, of the Great Bear Lake patrol, came down to 

 Coronation Gulf* with a party from his winter quarters near old 

 Fort Confidence on Dease River, and in the same month the police 



* Inspector LaNauze had for servants and guides the family of Ilavinirk 

 who had been in the service of the Stefansson-Anderson Expedition, 1908-1912. 

 See index of "My Life With the Eskimo," for references to Ilavinirk. 



