stefansson-wrangel-09-26-001-052

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37

blind five or six miles from land and was unable to proceed.
After being sick there for some days he had returned ashore.

Shortly after this McHinlay left for his camp at
Rodgers Harbor, where he was to stay according to the Captain’s
orders. He was gone several days and came back with the news that
Malloch had died and that Mamen was sick and swelling up, which
most of them were doing at our camp, too. He said Mamen could not
eat their pemmican and had asked him to go to Skeleton Island, some
twenty or thirty miles from our camp, to get him a tin of another
kind of pemmican which we had cached there. McKinlay had tried
to do this and had got lost to the extent of not finding Skeleton
Island, whereupon he had continued along the land until he came to
our camp. He was snowblind and played out, so he got the Chief
and one of the firemen to return to Rodgers Harbor to look after
Mamen, as Tempieman was unable to do it.

From now on the seals began to come out of their
holes to sun themselves on the ice and the native and I occasion-
ally got one, which was a change from the pemmican. Birds would
fly over us in flocks but we rarely got one of them on the wing
with our rifles. It was then we felt not having a shotgun.

The second of June McKinlay, the Eskimo family and
I left for Cape Waring where I knew of a crowbill rookery.
McKinlay was to take back the sleds and team of three dogs to fetch
the rest, who were all sick. Before we arrived at Cape Waring
we were met by the Chief and the fireman from Rodgers Harbor with
the news that when they arrived Mamen had died and the steward
was nearly out of his head with the two dead men beside him in the
tent. They had come back to get their effects and return to the
Harbour.

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