ent first to
Karnah, on the Redcliffe Peninsula, thence to Kangerdlooksoah and
Nunatoksoah, near the head of the gulf. Returning on our course, we came
back to Karnah, then went south to the neighborhood of the Itiblu
Glacier, then northwest again by a devious course around the islands and
the points to Kookan, in Robertson Bay, then to Nerke, on C. Saumarez,
then on to Etah, where we joined the _Roosevelt_, having obtained all
the Eskimos and dogs we needed,--two hundred and forty-six of the
latter, to be exact.

There was no intention of taking to the far North all the Eskimos taken
aboard the _Erik_ and the _Roosevelt_--only the best of them. But if any
family wanted transportation from one settlement to another, we were
glad to accommodate them. It is to be doubted if anywhere on the waters
of the Seven Seas there was ever a more outlandishly picturesque vessel
than ours at this time--a sort of free tourist steamship for traveling
Eskimos, with their chattering children, barking dogs, and other goods
and chattels.

[Illustration: ESKIMO DOGS OF THE EXPEDITION (246 IN ALL) ON SMALL
ISLAND, ETAH FJORD]

Imagine this man-and-dog-bestrewn ship, on a pleasant, windless summer
day in Whale Sound. The listless sea and the overarching sky are a vivid
blue in the sunlight--more like a scene in the Bay of Naples than one in
the Arctic. There is a crystalline clearness in the pure atmosphere that
gives to all colors a brilliancy seen nowhere else--the glittering white
of the icebergs with the blue veins running through them; the deep reds,
warm grays, and rich browns of the cliffs, streaked here and there with
the yellows of the sandstone; a little farther away sometimes the
soft green grass of this little arctic oasis; and on the distant horizon
the steel-blue of the great inland ice. When the little auks fly high
against the sunlit sky, they appear like the leaves of a forest when the
early frost has touched them and the first gale of autumn carries them
away, circling, drifting, eddying through the air. The desert of
northern Africa may be as beautiful as Hichens tells us; the jungles of
Asia may wear as vivid coloring; but to my eyes there is nothing so
beautiful as the glittering Arctic on a sunlit summer day.

On August 11 the _Erik_ reached Etah, where the _Roosevelt_ was awaiting
her. The dogs were landed on an island, the _Roosevelt_ was washed, the
boilers were blown down and filled with fresh water, the furnaces