448 
SETTING OUT. 
me, and we will club our wits. I do not fear the cold: 
we are impregnable in our furs while under exercise, 
though if we should be forced to walk, and give out, it 
might be a different matter. We shall have, I imagine, 
a temperature not much above —54°, and I do not see 
how we are to carry heating-apparatus. We have load 
enough without it. Our only diet will be a stock of 
meat-biscuit, to which I shall add for myself—Peter¬ 
sen’s taste is less educated—a few rats, chopped up 
and frozen into the tallow-balls. 
“December 28, Thursday.—I have fed the do"s the 
last two days on their dead brethren. Spite of all 
proverbs, dog will eat dog, if properly cooked. I have 
been saving up some who died of fits, intending to use 
their skins, and these have come in very opportunely 
I boil them into a sort of bloody soup, and deal them 
out twice a day in chunks and solid jelly; for of course 
they are frozen like quartz rock. These salt meats are 
absolutely poisonous to the Northern Esquimaux do" 
We have now lost fifty odd, and one died yesterday in 
the very act of eating his reformed diet. 
“ The moon to-morrow will be for twelve hours above 
the horizon, and so nearly circumpolar afterward as to 
justify me in the attempt to reach the Esquimaux 
hunting-ground about Cape Alexander. Every thing is 
ready; and, God willing, I start to-morrow, and pass the 
four-hours’ dog-halt in the untenanted hut of Anoatok. 
Then we have, as it may be, a fifteen, eighteen or 
twenty hours’ march, run and drive, before we reach a 
shelter among the heathen of the Bay. 
