240 



FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [April 



failed, hunt as hard as we could. Tracks everywhere, 

 but not a musk-ox could be found. 



My older two men, Ak-pood-a-shah-o and Ak-kom- 

 mo-ding-wa, were sent back from this point. The former 

 had tears in his eyes, poor fellow. He wished to go the 

 whole way, and I wanted him to go, but I was afraid 

 his wife was without meat and even without an igloo. I 

 waved to them as we headed west, over an apparently 

 limitless field of ice, with Amund Ringnes Island as our 

 objective point. Old Torngak had his eyes on us, send- 

 ing a cold wind and a drift which obscured everything 

 but our dogs. A good hard surface was soon succeeded 

 by a slumpy crust, tiring the dogs and presenting a hard 

 footing for us, walking in the rear of the sledges. For 

 eight hours and forty minutes we traveled, with only 

 two stops of ten minutes each to untangle our traces. 

 Clearing weather enabled me in the evening to get 

 bearings of North Cornwall, a high mountain on Amund 

 Ringnes Island, and prominent points of Axel Heiberg 

 Island. 



I quote from my field journal: 



April 13th, Twenty-third day. — Just eight hours from our igloo out 

 on the ice, a total of sixteen hours and forty minutes from Cape 

 Southwest. I should estimate our rate to be about three and one- 

 quarter miles an hour. Allowing fifteen minutes each for four stops 

 to untangle traces, our actual time was fifteen hours and forty- 

 minutes. That makes the distance fifty and eight-tenths miles. 

 To save our dogs, we have walked half of this, at least. 



Yesterday afternoon a land appeared northwest of us which did 

 not correspond with anything on the map. I obtained a bearing of 

 it of 79° east. I thought that possibly, as we went on, it might fit 

 in somewhere, but to-day it is as much of a mystery as ever. My 

 Eskimos declared it to be Cape Ludvig, and that we had missed and 

 passed what we headed for. Calculating mentally the local apparent 

 time, and taking a bearing of the sun, I told them we were all right 

 and that the new land was not on the map. 



