WE MEET THE ICE 
19 
every hour possible. With this in mind, Stefans- 
son now decided to go ashore and make his way to 
Point Barrow on foot. He would need at least a 
day there to obtain furs for our use and he could 
have his work all done by the time we reached there. 
Accordingly, at eleven o’clock, he took the doctor 
and a couple of Eskimo, with a dog sledge, and 
went ashore over the ice, the Eskimo and the dog- 
sledge returning late in the afternoon. It was sum¬ 
mer and there was no snow or ice on the land so by 
walking all night in the continuous August day¬ 
light, Stefansson and the doctor reached Point 
Barrow in the morning. 
By the sixth, usually drifting only a few miles 
a day but occasionally getting clear of the ice for 
a while to go ahead under our own power, we had 
reached a point about a mile from shore off Cape 
Smythe, which is only a few miles from Point Bar- 
row. At midnight Stefansson returned from 
Point Barrow, bringing with him some new mem¬ 
bers of the expedition: an Eskimo family of five, 
consisting of Kerdrillo or Kuralluk, a man about 
thirty-five years old, his wife Keruk, about twenty- 
eight, and their children, a girl of seven who went 
by the name of Helen and a baby called Mugpi not 
much over a year old; an Eskimo named Katakto- 
vick, between eighteen and twenty years old, who 
was already a widower, with a baby girl whom he 
