66 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



me that during the last few years they had been so much 

 hunted by natives in the employ of the whalers that none 

 were to be expected now north of the mountains, which 

 were twenty or thirty miles inland. 



At Shingle Point we were looking forward to a winter 

 of nothing to eat but fish. In recent years the Eskimos 

 had been able to buy from the ships all the groceries 

 they wanted, but they had never wanted very much. In 

 fact, the whalers had been coaxing and almost forcing 

 the Eskimos to eat groceries so as to get from them in 

 exchange more fresh meat and fish to use on shipboard. 

 This year the condition was entirely different. The 

 whalers had been compelled by the accident of an early 

 freeze-up to spend the previous winter in the Arctic. The 

 summer of 1906 they were so short of groceries that none 

 of the Eskimos had been able to buy any appreciable 

 quantity. 



There had been the expectation that one or two ships 

 would come in from the west, and we had all been hoping 

 to buy from them. Mr. Harrison had had the forethought 

 to wheedle some groceries out of one of the whalers before 

 they had given up hope of a western ship coming in. 

 That is how he came to have the flour and other things 

 I have mentioned. I did not try to buy anything, for I 

 was at first expecting my own ship any day. The 

 Eskimos had tried their best to buy, but had been able 

 to get nothing except tea and a little flour. The flour 

 they had secured from Captain McKenna and that only 

 because some gasoline had been spilt upon two or three 

 dozen sacks and they were fairly soaked and reeking with 

 it. The Eskimos I was living with had secured a few of 

 these sacks and occasionally they used to make some 

 pancakes or doughnuts fried in seal oil. I had as yet a 



