72 THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE KARLUK 
not uncomfortable out of doors, even in American 
clothes. Mr. Hadley finished the third Peary 
sledge on the eleventh. On the same day I had the 
Eskimo build a large snow igloo on the floe where 
we had our box-house of supplies, to furnish addi¬ 
tional shelter for ourselves and the dogs. We be¬ 
gan making wooden boxes for the protection of our 
Primus stoves in case we had to take to the ice. 
The Primus stove is an ingenious device for heat¬ 
ing tea or whatever else you have that needs heat¬ 
ing; it uses kerosene oil, ignited by means of 
alcohol, works somewhat like a plumber’s torch and 
has long been used by men engaged in Arctic work. 
It is not so efficient as the special alcohol stove in¬ 
vented by Peary for his expeditions but as a gen¬ 
eral rule it does good work. On our trip to 
Wrangell Island, we used gasoline in these stoves, 
although warned by the directions in big red letters 
not to do so. In spite of the directions the gasoline 
worked well and did not need to be ignited by 
alcohol. 
On the sixteenth I had the Eskimo dig out the 
seal meat which we had kept in the “ice-houses” 
near the ship and put it on deck, so that we could 
have it handy in case the ice broke up around the 
ship. Furthermore, I wanted to see how much we 
had accumulated. I found that we had forty-one 
seal, about 1600 pounds, enough to last twenty-five 
