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Sept. 19.—Six of us have just returned from a trip up the Hunt River—Harry Reynolds, Wyse, Cox, Rivers, Clyde and myself. I was culinary officer as usual. We had the eighteen-foot sealing boat, and It was loaded pretty heavily. The whole of us had to work for it, one in the stern of the boat to steer, one wading at the tow-line as near the boat as possible, to lift it over snags, and the other four tugging at the tow-line. We wore hip boots and outside of them oil-skin trousers tied around the ankles. Even with this outfit we were constantly getting into the water all over. Rivers got a soaking the first day. He shot a duck and jumped out of the boat in pursuit. The bottom is so plain through the water that it is deceptive, and he went in up to his waist, but he grabbed the side of the boat to keep from going under. He got his duck—and a ducking thrown in. We had to pull him in and to the shore, where we got him out of his wet clothes. In the afternoon Wyse also got a ducking by falling into a pool as he was scrambling up a steep bank. We found good camping-places. We had two tents, which we put up facing each other, with a flap left up on the side of one of them for a door. The two were heated by the sheet-iron camp-stove. At noon we did not put up the tents, but got dinner in the open—flapjacks, coffee and bacon. I shot two geese the first day out, which gave us a couple of meals. They were young and so fat I could not save their skins. But I made a drawing of one of them so that I could be positive of their identity. Looking them up when I got home where my books are, I found them to be the Hutchins goose. The doctor and I shot two white-fronted geese on the banks of the Kowak. We see a good many, but they also see us and we have to do a good deal of sneaking through the bushes to get any.

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