Cape York is the bold, bluff headland which marks the southern point of the stretch of arctic coast inhabited by my Eskimos, the most northerly human beings in the world.

It is the headland whose snowy cap I have seen so many times rising in the distance above the horizon line of Melville Bay as my ships have steamed north.

At the base of the headland nestles the most southerly of all the Eskimo villages, and it has marked the point of meeting, year after year, between the members of this tribe and myself.
At Cape York we were on the threshold of the actual work.

I had on board the ship when I arrived there all the equipment and assistance which the civilized world could yield.

Beginning there, I was to take on the tools, the material, the personnel, that the arctic regions themselves were to furnish for their own conquest.