82 rOUE YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [April 



trod its shores and climbed its summits, even though I knew that 

 that pleasure could be only for another in another season. 



He left his discovery for younger men to prove or 

 disprove; this we had done. If Admiral Peary did see 

 land due northwest from Cape Thomas Hubbard, then 

 we had moved it at least 200 miles from shore. To see 

 land at a distance of 200 miles from where Peary stood, 

 the land must reach an altitude of more than 30,000 feet! 

 Such an altitude in that latitude and longitude is con- 

 trary to all scientific reasoning. The highest peaks of 

 Grant Land and Ellesmere Land do not exceed 6,000 

 feet, while Axel Heiberg, Amund Ringnes, and Ellef 

 Ringnes Islands are even considerably lower. 



Food for two days' farther advance remained on our 

 sledges. Should we still go on.? From our last camp 

 onward the character of the ice seemed to have changed 

 completely. The leads and small pressure ridges hither- 

 to had trended east and west diagonally across our course. 

 The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth marches were over 

 a rolling plain of old ice covered with low mounds and 

 compacted drift. From the summit of a pressure ridge 

 the sea ice now presented a perfect chaos of pressure 

 ridges crossing and crisscrossing in all directions. Such 

 a condition must result from one of the following causes: 

 proximity to land, strong currents, or passage over 

 shoal ground. I am inclined to attribute it to the last. 

 That we were not near land was evident. That there 

 was no current is shown by the fact that a pemmican 

 hatchet was lowered by a strong thread to a depth of 

 150 fathoms, remaining perfectly plumb throughout the 

 whole process. Two days' work through such ice would 

 net possibly eight or ten miles, breaking sledges, wear- 

 ing out dogs, and reducing supplies to the limit. To 



