When first you leave home to travel in a foreign land you receive impressions more vivid than those of any later journey to the same country. If you at once rush your views and observations into print you are likely to have an interesting book but not so likely an accurate one. You will probably regret some parts of that book on grounds of mere regard for truth, for you will see later that you erred both in observations and conclusions.When first I went to the polar regions I came back at the end of a year and a half full of enthusiasm for the Arctic and for the Eskimos.Luckily that enthusiasm was translated into the organization of a second expedition that left for the North in seven months, and not into a book to be published then.As I look over my diaries of that time I shudder to think how vastly I might have augmented the already great misknowledge of the Arctic had I published everything I imagined I had seen and everything I thought I knew.CONTENTSPREFACECHAPTER I - Preparations For A Lifework Of ExplorationCHAPTER II - Down The Mackenzie River Through 2,000 Miles Of Indian CountryCHAPTER III - First Impressions Of The EskimosCHAPTER IV - Captain Klinkenberg-Sea Wolf And DiscovererCHAPTER V - The Whaling Fleet Sails AwayCHAPTER VI - Learning To Live As An Eskimo-On A Diet Of Fish Without SaltCHAPTER VII - How An Eskimo Sailed Through The StormCHAPTER VIII - An Autumn Journey Through Arctic MountainsCHAPTER IX - The Sun Goes Away For The WinterCHAPTER X - Lost In The Mackenzie DeltaCHAPTER XI - An Arctic Christmas With An English Country GentlemanCHAPTER XII - The Life At TuktuyaktokCHAPTER XIII - Learning To Build A Snowhouse And To Be Comfortable In OneCHAPTER XIV - Travels After The Sun Came BackCHAPTER XV - We Go In Search Of Our Own ExpeditionCHAPTER XVI - A Spring Journey In An Eskimo Skin BoatCHAPTER XVII - A Race Over The Arctic Mountains In SummerCHAPTER XVIII - On A Raft Down The Porcupine RiverSHORT STORIES OF ADVENTURECHAPTER I - How I Learned To Hunt CaribouCHAPTER II - How I Learned To Hunt SealsCHAPTER III - How We Hunt Polar Bears