BRADLEY'S ACCOUNT OF THE COOK EXPEDITION 119 



dash to the Pole from the west, relying on the drift of the ice to carry 

 him to the eastward. Now, that seems to have worked all right. 



"In his outfit was a canvas boat, one which was easily collapsed, 

 and it occupied some of the space and weight which might have been 

 used for food, but it was worth it. Now, according to the books,, 

 when your Arctic explorer gets a great lane of water in the ice or, 

 a lead he sits down by the side of it for a while and keeps hoping 

 until it closes up. Sometimes two or three days pass before his hope 

 comes out. Dr. Cook was able to go across these places in his canvas 

 boat. The boat could be used for a tent at night and was handy 

 when not in commission for use as a tarpaulin cover. 



"It was the idea of Dr. Cook that the people he left behind him 

 on the land should cover his retreat. That left him about three hun- 

 dred and fifty miles to traverse from March i/th to April 2ist, the 

 date of his discovery, or thirty days according to my calculation. 

 This is an average of only ten miles a day. The sleds which he had 

 were exceptionally good, for he made them himself, and the dogs he 

 obtained from the Eskimos were in the finest condition. They were 

 fat, strong and full of life ; in fact, according to all I can hear, better 

 dogs were never seen. At that, of course, there were some w r hich 

 would weaken and have to be killed, these being fed to their mates. 

 With a little good luck here and there the dogs could easily beat ten 

 miles a day, and some days go far beyond it. Mr. Peary in some of 

 his books speaks of going as high as thirty and forty miles a day. 

 One can go on dog sleds over reasonably good land ice at the rate 

 of sixty miles a day. 



"Before Dr. Cook left me he said he would do another thing* 

 that no other explorer had done, and that was to come back from the 

 farthest north on foot, whether he was successful or not, and to 

 reach the Danish trading post of Upernavik, where he knew that in 

 time a vessel must arrive. All this had been carefully mapped out 

 two years ago. 



"He made his way back slowly. He lived in Ellesmere Land. 



