Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/245

Rh he got down to where the Eskimos were, and he lived with them till the spring on deer meat and seals which they caught. Then he travelled to the south shore of Victoria Land and found a whaler, the Nares, which had been wintering there. He was aboard this vessel on his way south by way of Alaska and the Bering Sea when it met the Kadiack at the end of the summer. The Kadiack had come directly from Nome and brought reports of the Viborg's starting up to Mason Land by the original route of the Aurora. Hedon immediately changed from the Nares to the Kadiack and returned with it into Coronation Gulf, where it was to winter. Taking supplies from the ship on his sledge, and accompanied by one Eskimo, Eric returned more than four hundred miles on his trail as rapidly as he could to meet any relief party that might have found his cairns and be following his route.

On this trip he lived on the country after his supplies from the Kadiack gave out. For a while he found caribou; then game of all kinds became very scarce. The Eskimos he met were in want and having a very hard time. He gained a village about thirty miles below the