96 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



our dogs were eating the meat that might be needed to 

 keep our hosts from shortage during the absence of the 

 sun when hunting is difficult. Accordingly, we loaded up 

 our sledges with the meat we had come to fetch and 

 started for the coast. 



The journey back was on the whole no more difficult 

 than coming south had been. Our sledges were now 

 loaded where they had been light, but there was more 

 snow on the ground and the going was better. Also it 

 was down hill most of the time. Coming up we had cut 

 across the river courses a good deal, scrambling up and 

 down steep places. Going back we took a longer way, 

 following the windings of a river that comes out about 

 five miles east of Shingle Point. 



On the way down the river Roxy walked ahead of the 

 leading sled with an ice spear which had been made by 

 fastening a big file at the end of a staff seven or eight 

 feet long and then sharpening the point of the file. He 

 jabbed this through the snow into the ice ahead of him, 

 raising the spear methodically and bringing it down again 

 every three or four steps. Evidently he was testing the 

 ice to see if it was strong enough to bear us. At first 

 this appeared ridiculous, for we had now had continuous 

 frosts for more than a month and the temperature was 

 twenty or thirty degrees below zero. But, like everything 

 else, the explanation of the danger was simple when you 

 once understood it. 



Roxy explained the situation to me in detail. ' Early in 

 the fall while the river Is : till open the falling snow melts 

 in the running water and disappears. Later you may 

 have a sharp frost for two or three days when there is 

 no snow falling, and ire two or three inches thick or 

 even a foot thick may form on the river. Then comes a 



