Читать книгу The White Czar. A Story of a Polar Bear онлайн

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It was that same old story of the women, the old men, and the children, waiting for the return of the hunter or the fisherman. The head of the house gone upon a hard and dangerous expedition to wrest a meagre living from the treasury of Mother Nature. Many cold dark days would pass before they saw the three komatiks and the brave hunters again.

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It was a wild and desolate land towards which the three komatiks or sledges, had pointed their noses. Such a trip as only the hardiest white men ever take. Even then they have an escort of Eskimos and go well equipped. But to the hardy Child of the Snow, it was just another exciting adventure in his adventurous life. There were few landmarks that would have helped a white man. But the Eskimo has a wonderful bump of location, and this is almost as good as a compass. It also enables him to draw very accurate maps of any country he has visited. But strangely enough he has little idea of distance.

In this desolate land there was almost no timber just a few creeping willows and reindeer moss. This was interspersed with a wild medley of rocks, large boulders and small stones. Cliffs and ledges intersected the trail and made the going about as hard as travelling upon Mother Earth could well be. The country had a wild unfinished look where the face of the earth showed at all. This was upon high precipitous hills where the arctic winds had full sweep.