8 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



in the theological school, but I later transferred to the 

 graduate school to study other branches of anthropology. 

 In that connection I became a teaching fellow. Earlier 

 in my career I had been a school master for portions of 

 several years, but I did not like teaching very well so 

 I decided to become a field investigator of anthropology 

 in tropical Africa. For two years I used all my spare 

 time reading books about Africa and everything was 

 ready for me to accompany a British commercial expe- 

 dition under military escort that was going into East 

 Central Africa. 



At Harvard in my day it was usual for a number of 

 friends to form a group and have assigned them in the 

 dining room a special table. At meals we used to dis- 

 cuss all sorts of things, including what we had read in 

 the papers. One day somebody asked me what I thought 

 of the accounts then in the press about a new polar expe- 

 dition being organized by an American, Leffingwell, and 

 a Dane, Mikkelsen. They thought I might be interested 

 for I had written and published the year before an essay 

 on how the Norsemen discovered Greenland about nine 

 hundred years ago, and how they were the first Europeans 

 who ever saw Eskimos. But I said I had no keen per- 

 sonal interest in the proposed polar expedition because 

 my thoughts for two years had been centered upon Africa. 



A day or two after this discussion we were again to- 

 gether at dinner when a messenger boy brought me a 

 telegram. It was signed by Ernest de Kovcn Leffingwell, 

 and said he would pay my expenses if I would come to 

 Chicago to have a talk about going with his polar expe- 

 dition to study the Eskimos in Victoria Island who had 

 never seen a white man. 



Of all the excited discussion which followed the reading 



