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that end. Surprisingly, there seemed to be almost no market in New York or
elsewhere. The collection as a whole was not saleable. Limited Certain selections from
it were sold but the prices were at very inadequate. prices.

Mr. Noice had accompanied me on some of our longest journeys.
Through exceptional mental adaptability and willingness he had been able to over-
come in considerable part certain physical disabilities, becoming in spite of
them one of our good men. His point of view about opinions of the Arctic as compared with
other lands was about the same as southern lands were similar to my own. Through personal friendliness friendship, and
through a desire to secure the widest circulation for a narrative which I knew
must necessarily confirm my own writings on about the climate and other geographic
aspects of the Far North, I had two motives for helping Mr. Noice to get his book
written. His original idea had been to write one large book but, on my advice,
he undertook to write two instead. The first was to be the account of how he had
joined our expedition as a school boy of twenty and how through an apprenticeship
of two years he had acquired an understanding of the North and of the methods of
life and travel. When this book of his initiation had been written, he was to
undertake the second, which would be more ambitious. In it he would describe
his independent work in Coronation Gulf, giving special attention to the
language of the Eskimos, for he had acquired the spoken dialect of that particular
section perhaps more thoroughly than either of the other investigators who had
attempted it - Mr. Diamond Jenness and myself. In order that he might be free to
devote his entire time to the writing, I furnished Mr. Noice for some time with
free lodgings and later lent after that loaned him money with which he paid his board and housing
for more than a year. nearly two years.

By the spring of 1923 the first book had been written under the
title of "A Polar Picnic" and had been submitted to various American publishers.
One publisher, the Appletons, made an offer for it but Mr. Noice declined it on