54 THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE KARLUK 
the Arctic Region prepared by Gilbert H. Gros- 
venor, director and editor of the National Geo¬ 
graphic Society, for Peary’s book “The North 
Pole,” a copy of which we had in the ship’s library. 
We were near enough to have seen Keenan Land 
with a telescope from the masthead, on a fine clear 
day, but though we kept a constant lookout for it 
from the crow’s nest, we saw no signs of it what¬ 
ever. 
All this time we continued to get a good many 
seal. Most of these were shot by the Eskimo, 
whose skill at hunting of this kind far exceeded 
that of any other members of the party. We 
needed the flesh for fresh meat for ourselves and 
fed the skins and blubber to the dogs. The seal 
is the one indispensable animal of the Arctic. Its 
flesh is by no means disagreeable, though it has a 
general flavor of fish, which constitutes the seal’s 
chief food. 
We continued our preparations for an extended 
stay in the ice. The ship was now some two feet 
lighter than she had been the middle of August 
when first frozen in; we had burned a good deal 
of coal and had removed coal, biscuit, beef, pernrni- 
can and numerous other things from the deck and 
also from the hold, sledging them to the heavy floe 
of which I have already spoken. This floe was 
about half an acre in size and about thirty feet thick, 
