Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/246

232 camp of the Viborg people, where an Eskimo hunter told him of seeing a party which he had supposed to be the strange white kabluna travelling south over the ice and later going into camp after the storm. The Eskimo had been afraid to approach and had hidden. Hedon took this man and started with him and a sledge; but as they approached the camp of the kabluna the Eskimo lost courage and deserted, so Eric came on alone.

Many details were not then told; but what was related made plain that at least one of the cairns Eric built on his journey south had been erected upon a shore visited by the Viborg after leaving Mason Land. Geoff could not be sure, from Hedon's description of the place, whether the cairn which had been missed by the searchers sent on shore had stood in one of the spots explored only by Latham. But Geoff learned that it was Eric who had visited and had photographed the stone house near the spot where the Viborg burned. Further, Eric had built the Aurora cairns where Geoff had discovered the stones strewed in front of the lonely little hut. The message left there told