veling light?"

"Jarvis had to make a nine-hundred-mile roundabout, clear the way round
the Seward Peninsula," explained the whaler.

"What for?"

"To get the reindeer."

"That's right," said Eric. "I forgot about the reindeer."

"They're the whole story," the other reminded him. "They couldn't have
got food up to us with dogs, nohow. It would have taken an army of
dogs."

"I don't see why?"

"You've got to feed dogs," was the answer. "Two hundred an' fifty pounds
is a good weight for a dog team an' half of that is dog-feed. The food
for the humans in the party is nigh another fifty pound. So, you see, a
dog team on a long journey will only get in with about a hundred pounds.
At the rate of a pound a day a man for four months, it would take all
of five hundred dog teams of ten dogs each to get the stuff up there!
An' what would you do with the five thousand dogs when you got 'em up
there?

[Illustration: REINDEER MESSENGERS OF RESCUE.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

[Illustration: REINDEER THAT SAVED THREE HUNDRED LIVES.

Part of Charlie Artisarlook's herd, driven a thousand miles through
blizzards by three Coast Guard heroes.

Courtesy of U.S. Coast Guard.]

"No, winter travel in Alaska's got to be by reindeer. You mayn't know
it, but it's the U. S. Government that has made the Eskimos happy.
There's one man, Sheldon Jackson, of the Bureau of Education, who's
brought more peace and happiness to a larger number of people than 'most
any man I know."

"How? By introducing reindeer?"

"Just that," the whaler answered. "The Eskimo would have been wiped off
the face of the earth but for that one man's work. He started the
reindeer idea, he brought in a few himself, he got the Government
interested an' now reindeer are the backbone of northern Alaska. Our
steam whalers had driven the whales an' the walrus an' the seal so far
north that the Eskimo couldn't reach them. They were slowly starvin' to
death by hundreds when Uncle Sam stepped in. And your captain
commandant, that's Bertholf, who I'm telling you about now, he did a lot
for Alaska when he brought in the bigger breed, the Tunguse reindeer,
which are comin' to be the real beasts o' burden here in the north. It
was knowin' what could be done with reindeer that sent Jarvis round to
Point Rodney and Cape Prince of Wales to get the herds together an'
start 'em north."

"I thought," said Eric, wrinkling up his forehead, "there was a herd
nearer