ICY HELL By Will E. Hudson
The author of Icy Hell (Constable, los.), for 3o years a news cameraman, joined a hunting and collecting ex- pedition to the coasts and islands of the Behring Sea. The party sailed from Seattle and, after touching at the Aleutian Islands, crossed to the Kamchatka Peninsula. The account of the appalling conditions of life in the Aleutians will move the reader to share Mr. Hudson's indignation at the neglect of these wretched islanders, now deprived of their once abundant food-supply by the white hunters who have ruthlessly slaughtered their seal and walrus flocks. Eventually, having taken whaling gear on board, they sailed through the Behring Straits and along the north coast of Alaska. There the boat was frozen in, and the author with three others decided to return overland across the Endicott range to Fort Yukon. Inexperienced, wearing home-made deer-skin clothes and travelling through unexplored coun- try with only a cheap pocket-compass for guide, with the thermometer at 6o degrees below zero, they walked about five hundred miles and reached Fort Yukon in a state of collapse. Mr. Hudson, though at times inclined to be facetious and sentimental, has an eye for essentials, and tells his story well.
Previous page
