IN SEARCH OF OUR OWN EXPEDITION 183 



some. This forecast was now coming true. Not only 

 were the caribou there but they were on a hillside and, 

 therefore, probably on Barter Island, for Captain Leavitt 

 had said it was the first hilly country we would come to. 



I know now that I should have gone after those caribou 

 myself. The Eskimos of northwestern Alaska are excel- 

 lent seal hunters but they do not see any caribou unless 

 they leave their own country to go southeast into the 

 Kuvuk or Noatak valleys or unless they join a whaler 

 and later become caribou hunters in the service of the 

 ships in the Herschel Island district. I did not realize 

 this fully at the time and took it for granted that Cape 

 York was a good caribou hunter. I thought only of the 

 condition of his eyes, but he said that they were not bad 

 now and he would try it. We could not both go because 

 one of us had to watch the dogs to keep them from mak- 

 ing a noise. So long as one man was around the tent 

 they would remain quiet, but if both of us left they would 

 probably set up a howl because they were tied and could 

 not follow. If they were not tied they would follow us. 

 Either would have been fatal to any chance of getting 

 caribou. 



I did not see how Cape York hunted the caribou, for 

 before he got started from the tent they had wandered 

 over the hill to the far side. In half an hour I heard 

 shooting and in about an hour he came back with a long 

 explanation of just why he had failed to kill anything. 

 One thing was that he had miscalculated the wind and 

 they had heard and perhaps winded him while he was still 

 behind the cover of a hill. When he got to the top of 

 the hill they were running some distance off. According 

 to his account, he should have been able to kill them, 

 nevertheless, had it not been that when he aimed the 



