IN SEARCH OF OUR OWN EXPEDITION 189 



This problem of the strange Eskimos occupied my mind 

 continually more and more as time passed. We knew 

 that no whalers had been there, for the first whalers in 

 the western Arctic had come in to Herschel Island only 

 in 1889 and the captains of most of those early ships 

 were still captains in the present fleet. I had learned 

 from them that no whaler had ever gone ashore in Victoria 

 Island, except that Captain Cottle had once landed a 

 small party of Alaska Eskimos to pursue some caribou 

 they saw from shipboard. The caribou had been killed 

 and the Eskimos had come aboard with the meat without 

 reporting having seen even signs of people. It had been 

 the common whaler belief that Victoria Island, although 

 formerly inhabited by Eskimos, was now uninhabited, 

 and Klinkenberg's discovery had, therefore, seemed even 

 more remarkable to them than it had to me. Whalers 

 have never reached Victoria Island from the east side, as 

 I knew in advance and as I verified later by inquiries 

 from Captain George Comer, a veteran of the eastern 

 whaling fleet, who still lives in Connecticut. 



I gradually made up my mind to solve sometime and 

 somehow the mystery of the white Eskimos of Victoria 

 Island. The opportunity did not come for three years. 



