CAGNI STARTS NORTHWARD 77 



miles south of the 82 5' Payer had made it and 

 rounding Cape Auk, the Stella Polare went into 

 winter quarters in Teplitz Bay, whence Captain 

 Umberto Cagni started, on the llth of March, 1900, 

 for his forty-five days' march towards the North Pole. 



It was a great disappointment to the Duke to have 

 to stay with the ship instead of leading this well- 

 equipped and thoroughly organised sledge attempt, 

 but owing to an accident two of his fingers had been 

 so severely frost-bitten that they had to be amputated, 

 and, unless a second winter was to be spent in the ice, 

 a start was imperative before he could recover from 

 the operation. Thus all he could do was to assist at 

 the first encounter of the sledges with the pressure 

 ridges and wish Cagni the longest possible journey and 

 a safe return. There was every appearance of the 

 journey being a difficult one, for on the first day a 

 stoppage had to be made every quarter of a mile or 

 thereabouts for a road to be cut through the ridges 

 with ice-axes, while next day a new hindrance was 

 experienced in the young ice in the channels being too 

 thin at times to support the sledges, one of which began 

 to sink and was only extricated with difficulty, so that 

 only one sledge could be allowed on such ice at a time. 



On the 13th of March the auxiliary sledge was sent 

 back, thus reducing the caravan to a dozen sledges and 

 ninety-eight dogs, which in a long line passed over 

 a vast plain covered with great rugged blocks of ice, 

 as though they had been thrown down confusedly by 

 a giant's hand to bar the way. The wind was north- 

 east, the cold intense, fifty below zero, not to be 

 particular to a degree or so, for, as Cagni says, when 



