When we again met the natives we saw one man who
had been there not a great while ago, and said there was nothing to be
seen where he previously saw many skeletons and other indications of
the white men's hospital tent.
In the division of labor at our lonely camps the searching devolved
chiefly upon Lieutenant Schwatka and the cooking and hunting upon me,
though he also killed several reindeer, and I occasionally assisted in
the searching. Our diet was exclusively reindeer meat, eaten either raw
or cooked, and, as the animals were very fat, there was nothing to
complain of in that respect. The quantity that we ate was simply
astonishing; in fact, we found it easier to adapt ourselves to that
phase of Inuit life than any other.
Our greatest discomfort arose from the lack of sufficient shoes and
stockings. It requires women always to keep you comfortable in that
respect. Natives never go anywhere without their women. Our shoes were
completely worn, beyond possibility of repair, and the hair was
entirely worn off our stockings. The consequence was that walking was
torture. I could generally manage to patch up my shoes so that I could
start out hunting when necessary, well knowing they would last only for
a short distance, but trusting to my ambition in the chase to keep me
going, and the necessity of the case to get me back to the tent.
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