88 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [April 



true to north-northeast. Our powerful glasses, how- 

 ever, brought out more clearly the dark background in 

 contrast with the white, the whole resembling hills, 

 valleys, and snow-capped peaks to such a degree that, 

 had we not been out on the frozen sea for 150 miles, we 

 would have staked our lives upon its reality. Our 

 judgment then, as now, is tha^: this was a mirage or 

 loom of the sea ice. That there is land west of Axel 

 Heiberg Land — not northwest, as some scientists would 

 have us believe — I have no doubt. I would limit the 

 eastern edge of this land to 120° west longitude, and 

 the northern edge to 82° north latitude, for the follow- 

 ing reasons: Our eight days' travel out from Cape 

 Thomas Hubbard was over ice which had not been 

 subjected to great pressure, evidence that it was pro- 

 tected by some great body of land to the west against 

 the tremendous fields of ice driven on by the Arctic 

 current, which has its inception north of Behring Strait 

 and Wrangel Land, across the Pole, and down the 

 eastern shore of Greenland. At our farthest north, 82°, 

 all was suddenly changed. The long, level fields ended 

 in a sharp line going east and west; beyond this line 

 there was the roughest kind of ice, which had evidently 

 been pushed around the northern point of this unknown 

 land over shoal ground extending toward the north. 



We were so tired upon arriving at the igloo that we 

 decided not to try for the second record on the point 

 until morning. Three days' food now remained upon 

 our sledges. I decided to send Green and Pee-a-wah-to 

 to survey and explore the twenty -five miles of the un- 

 known coast-line of Axel Heiberg Land, while E-took-a- 

 shoo and I ran to Cape Colgate to secure the farthest- 

 north record of Sverdrup. 



