It is
interesting to note the order of their arrival. The whaler drawn by oily
lure followed the Bowhead east and north from Bering Sea. To man his
boats, to hunt caribou for him, and to furnish temporary spouses, the
whaler picked up and attached to his menage the Eskimo from the mainland
in little bunches _en famille_. Ensuing connubial complications brought
the missionary on the scene. To keep the whaler and the missionary from
each other's throats, and incidentally to make it easy for the American
citizen to trade in Canadian baleen and blubber, came the debonair Royal
Northwest Mounted Policeman, the red-coated incarnation of Pax
Britannica. There winter at Herschel every year two hundred and fifty
whalers and an equal number of Kogmollye and Nunatalmute Eskimo.
Pauline Cove on Herschel Island has three fathoms of water and can
winter fifty ships. Landing and looking about us, we experience a
feeling of remoteness, of alienation from the world of railroads and
automobiles and opera tickets. Back of the harbour are the officers'
quarters of the whaling company, the barracks of the Royal Northwest
Mounted Police, the huts of the Eskimo; in front of us the clear
panorama of the mountains on the shore-line.
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