IN SEARCH OF OUR OWN EXPEDITION 175 



point of view of a traveler by sled is necessarily different 

 from that of a whaling captain, for the sled traveler's eyes 

 are less than six feet above sea level as he follows the 

 beach, but the captain gets almost a bird's-eye view from 

 his masthead, more than a hundred feet above water. 



However, Captain Leavitt thought we could not miss 

 Barter Island, for that is the first land west of Herschel 

 Island higher than fifteen or twenty feet above sea level. 

 Herschel Island is about five hundred feet high and Barter 

 Island, Captain Leavitt thought, would be about a third 

 as high, consisting of rolling hills where the rest of the 

 coast is flat. On a clear day we could judge roughly also 

 by the distance of the mountains from the seacoast. Just 

 east of the boundary between Canada and Alaska at a 

 point some twenty miles west of Herschel Island, they 

 come nearer to the coast than at any point between the 

 Mackenzie River and Cape Lisburne near Bering Straits. 

 There are only six or eight miles of level prairie separat- 

 ing the coast from the first foothills, and the mountains 

 proper are not over fifteen miles from the sea. At the 

 Alaska boundary they are twenty or more miles inland 

 and as you go west they become farther and farther away 

 until in the vicinity of Barter Island Captain Leavitt 

 estimated them to be about thirty or thirty-five miles in- 

 land. They would be at least forty miles inland from 

 Flaxman Island, which is about fifty miles west of Barter 

 Island. 



But the mountains would be unlikely to guide us for 

 the spring fogs and snowstorms would prevent that. Our 

 hope was to recognize Barter Island when we came to it. 

 We would then estimate carefully our daily traveling 

 distances beyond that and when we got fifty miles west 

 of Barter Island we would search carefully or wait for 



