WE DRIFT AWAY FROM THE LAND 53 
ice at the edge of the dredge hole. With this ma¬ 
chine, on October 11 we got 1000 fathoms. 
The dog that had floated off the day before came 
back; this made me happy, because dogs were 
valuable to us and this particular dog, whose name 
was Molly, was going to have a litter of pups. 
All the dogs were now put back on the ice again, 
for the leads had all closed up and the danger 
appeared to be over for the present. 
Our Eskimo seamstress, Keruk, was working in¬ 
dustriously and by now had completed her fifteenth 
pair of winter deerskin boots. These are made 
from the leg and foot of reindeer that have 
been killed during the later fall or winter when 
they have their winter coats on, cut up into four 
or five strips which are all sewed together to form 
leggins, the hairy part inside; the sole is made from 
the skin of the ugsug, or bearded seal. Keruk 
worked on fur clothing also. She did the cutting 
and much of the sewing; some of the men knew 
how to sew and they helped, too. 
We continued our general drift to the north¬ 
west until October 22, when for a few days the 
wind shifted and sent us south and east before we 
took up our westward drift again. We were then 
about twenty-five miles south of where Keenan 
Land should have been, according to the map of 
