ing, and they take suggestions from the inexperienced white
men with a good-natured and superior tolerance. When one of the northern
belles was shaping a garment for Bartlett to wear on the spring sledge
journey, he anxiously urged her to give him plenty of room. Her reply
was a mixed Eskimo and English equivalent for:

"You just trust me, Captain! When you get out on the road to the Nor
Pol, you'll need a draw-string in your jacket, and not gussets." She had
seen me and my men come back from previous sledge journeys, and she knew
the effect of long continued fatigue and scanty rations in making a
man's clothes fit him loosely.

The Eskimos had the run of the ship, but the port side of the forward
deck house was given to them entirely. A wide platform three or four
feet high, made of packing boxes, was placed around the wall of the deck
house for them to sleep on. Each family had its own quarters,
partitioned off by planks, and screened in front by a curtain. They
cooked their own meat and whatever else they desired, though Percy, the
ship's steward, provided them with tea and coffee. If they had baked
beans, or hash, or anything of that kind from the ship's store, it was
cooked for them by Percy; and he also furnished them with his famous
bread, which for lightness and crispness is unsurpassed in the round
world.

The Eskimos seemed always to be eating. There was no table for the crowd
of them, as they do not incline to regular meal hours; but each family
ate by itself, as appetite dictated. I gave them pots, pans, plates,
cups, saucers, knives, forks, and oil stoves. They had access to the
ship's galley, day and night; but Percy was always amiable, and the
Eskimos at length learned not to wash their hands in the water in which
he purposed to boil meat.

The third day out the weather was villainous. It rained steadily, and
there was a strong southerly wind. The group of dogs on the main deck
stood about with low, dejected heads and dripping tails. Only at feeding
time did they take courage even to fight or snap at one another. Most of
the time the ship was stationary, or drifting slowly with the ice toward
the mouth of Dobbin Bay. When at last the ice loosened, we made about
ten miles in open water--then the wheel rope broke, and we had to stop
for repairs, unable to take advantage of the stretch of water still
before us. The captain's remarks when the strands of that cable parted I
will leave to the imagination of