THE WHALING FLEET SAILS AWAY 61 



Harrison, who has since written a book called "In Search 

 of an Arctic Continent." He was really in search of this 

 continent but had not been getting along very well, and 

 through no fault of his own. He had a theory, which 

 would have seemed tame enough to Admiral Peary or to 

 any one used to reading the books of polar exploration. 

 But to the whalers and Eskimos around Herschel Island, 

 it was exactly what they called it, "a harebrained 

 scheme." The Canadian and Alaskan Eskimos are in 

 great fear of the ocean ice. In winter they make their 

 living upon it in the vicinity of land, but seldom venture 

 more than five miles from shore, and never willingly more 

 than ten. The whalers had little book knowledge of 

 polar exploration, but had been for twenty years in 

 Alaska where sledge travel on moving ice is little under- 

 stood, and they were greatly impressed with the danger 

 and impracticability of it. 



With no first-hand knowledge of sea ice, but filled with 

 the lore of books, Harrison had come down the Mackenzie 

 intending to go from there to Cape Bathurst and across 

 by sled to Banks Island. Fifteen years later, this had 

 become such a commonplace that an old Eskimo employee 

 of mine, accompanied only by his wife who was rather 

 sickly, made the journey between Banks Island and Cape 

 Bathurst without difficulty. Harrison, however, was fif- 

 teen years ahead of his time, and when he proposed to 

 the whalers and the Cape Bathurst Eskimos that they 

 should sell him an outfit and some of them accompany 

 him on this journey, they thought him crazy. 



Harrison had come North accompanied by Hubert 

 Darrell, a man who had made a good pioneer journey 

 with David Hanbury from Chesterfield Inlet to the arctic 

 coast of Canada, then west to the Coppermine River, up 



