CHAPTER XV 



WE GO IN SEARCH OF OUR OWN EXPEDITION 



Although it still looked like winter, I considered spring 

 to begin April 7th when I started to follow the coast west- 

 ward in search of Flaxman Island which I had never 

 seen and my own expedition v/hich so far had been mine in 

 name only. 



My companion on this trip was an Eskimo from Cape 

 York on Bering Straits who had been with the whalers 

 so long that everybody seemed to have forgotten his 

 rightful name. Even the Eskimos called him "Cape 

 York" and he introduced himself to me by that name. 



Cape York had never been farther west in winter than 

 about halfway to Flaxman Island, but he had often seen 

 the place from shipboard as he passed by in summertime 

 aboard one or another of the whaling vessels and he 

 thought he would be able to recognize the vicinity when 

 we came to it. One might think that finding a ship an- 

 chored behind an island would not be particularly dif- 

 ficult, and neither would it be in good weather. But in 

 the Arctic the weather gets more disagreeable and more 

 difficult to deal with when spring approaches. 



In mid-winter it is cold in the Arctic but when you are 

 dressed Eskimo-style you don't mind it. Fifty or fifty- 

 five below zero is a little too cold, for if you run or exert 

 yourself violently and take the air rapidly into your lungs 

 in consequence, it has a sort of burning and half-stifling 

 effect. Forty below is about right and on the north coast 



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