TRAVELS AFTER THE SUN CAME BACK 165 



One difficulty was with the dogs. Their eyes kept get- 

 ting filled with the drifting snow and caking with the 

 freezing slush that resulted when the snow melted in their 

 eyes. When a dog can see no longer he refuses to travel 

 and commonly wants to curl up and sleep. We had to 

 clean their eyes every few minutes to keep them going. 



The other trouble was with my beard. One of my 

 southern ideas was that a beard would be some protection 

 against freezing the face. The Eskimos had told me that 

 this was the opposite of the truth, and it was partly 

 thoughtlessness that I did not take their advice and shave 

 clean for this journey. As it was, I had a full beard. 

 Had the weather been a little colder the condition might 

 not have been quite so bad. I think the temperature was 

 about io° below zero and the wind perhaps forty miles 

 an hour directly against us. The snow that struck my 

 face melted in part and the water ran down my cheeks, 

 freezing in the beard. This helped to cake the snow into 

 the beard. I tried at first to keep my face clear by taking 

 off my mittens and melting some of the ice off with my 

 hands but I soon concluded that if I continued this my 

 hands would freeze. Hands are worth a great deal more 

 than faces, especially in the North, and so I kept them 

 warm in my mittens, allowing my face to freeze. At first 

 I kept both eyes open by clearing them occasionally with 

 one of my hands but even this seemed a little risky, so 

 I closed one eye and allowed the ice to form over it. 



After some seven or eight hours of travel we got to 

 Stokes Point. Instead of being cold I was too warm, if 

 anything. But on my face there was a mask of ice which 

 I suppose must have weighed more than ten pounds. 

 When I went into the overheated Eskimo house, the 

 warmth of my face combined with the warmth of the 



