18 THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE KARLUK 
ship sank until I reached the coast of Siberia. 
There I traded it for a deerskin which I afterwards 
gave to a native at East Cape. The skin of the 
polar bear makes the best sleeping-robe for Arctic 
use and the skin of a young bear is also the best for 
trousers* because it will wear the longest and* 
furthermore, the hair will not fall out, in spite of 
the brushing and pounding you have to give it to 
get rid of the snow that will cling to it after the 
day’s march. 
Some time after we got this bear, I saw another 
one from the crow’s nest. We were going away 
from him, however, and getting along pretty well, 
so I hardly felt it wise to stop for him. Occasion¬ 
ally we saw walrus asleep on the ice. 
August 3 the wind again veered to the southwest, 
pushing the ice on shore and jamming the ship 
in it so that we were unable to make any prog¬ 
ress. We were about four miles off the Seahorse 
Islands. Here we found a current running to the 
eastward parallel with the shore and we began to 
drift with this current in an easterly direction which 
was the way we wanted to go. By eleven o’clock 
we had reached a point about two miles from shore 
and twenty-five miles southwest of Point Barrow. 
The early presence of ice on this coast convinced 
us that all was not to be plain sailing on our voyage 
to Herschel Island and that it behooved us to save 
