



PREFACE 



When first you leave home to travel in a foreign land 

 you receive impressions more vivid than those of any 

 later journey to the same country. If you at once rush 

 your views and observations into print you are likely to 

 J have an interesting book but not so likely an accurate 

 k one. You will probably regret some parts of that book 

 on grounds of mere regard for truth, for you will see 

 later that you erred both in observations and conclusions. 

 When first I went to the polar regions I came back at 

 the end of a year and a half full of enthusiasm for the 

 '■ Arctic and for the Eskimos. Luckily that enthusiasm 

 ~f was translated into the organization of a second expedi- 

 tion that left for the North in seven months, and not 

 into a book to be published then. As I look over my 

 diaries of that time I shudder to think how vastly I 

 might have augmented the already great misknowledge 

 of the Arctic had I published everything I imagined I 

 had seen and everything I thought I knew. 



At the end of my second expedition, after five winters 

 and seven summers in the North, I published "My Life 

 With the Eskimo" (New York and London, 1913). So 

 far I have discovered (with the help of critics and 

 through careful re-reading) a half dozen errors in that 

 volume. Some of these have been eliminated as the book 

 has been reprinted; the rest will be rectified in the next 

 print 'ng. 



At the end of my third expedition, with a background 

 of ten northern winters and thirteen summers, I wrote 



Hi 



