Boatswain Murphy, whom I was to leave at Etah, was a thoroughly trustworthy man, and I gave him instructions to prevent the Eskimos from looting the supplies and equipment left there by Dr.Cook, and to be prepared to render Dr.Cook any assistance he might require when he returned, as I had no doubt he would as soon as the ice froze over Smith Sound (presumably in January) so as to enable him to cross to Anoratok from Ellesmere Land, where I had no doubt he then was.
On the _Erik_ were three other passengers, Mr.C.C.Crafts, who had come north to take a series of magnetic observations for the department of terrestrial magnetism of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, Mr.
George S.Norton, of New York, and Mr.Walter A.Larned, the tennis champion.

The _Roosevelt's_ carpenter, Bob Bartlett, of Newfoundland (not related to Captain Bob Bartlett), and a sailor named Johnson also went back on the _Erik_.

That vessel was commanded by Captain Sam Bartlett (Captain Bob's uncle), who had been master of my own ship on several expeditions.
At Etah we took on a few more Eskimos, including Ootah and Egingwah, who were destined to be with me at the Pole; and I left there all the remaining Eskimos that I did not wish to take with me to winter quarters in the North.

We retained forty-nine--twenty-two men, seventeen women, ten children--and two hundred and forty-six dogs.

The _Roosevelt_, as usual, was loaded almost to the water's edge with the coal that had been crowded into her, the seventy tons of whale meat which we had bought in Labrador, and the meat and blubber of nearly fifty walruses.
We parted company from the _Erik_ and steamed north on the 18th of August, an intensely disagreeable day, with driving snow and rain, and a cutting wind from the southeast which made the sea very rough.