XII 



BACK ACROSS ELLESMERE LAND 



rMHE Demon of the North jealously guards his secrets; 

 -■- thus it has ever been. The ponderous doors which 

 guard and encircle his domain are the massive, ever- 

 stretching, relentless ice-fields which grip and grind and 

 crush the hearts of ships, thwarting the best-laid plans 

 of men. 



The weapons which assail the explorer are extreme 

 temperatures, heavy snows, drift, bitter winds, treach- 

 erous thin ice, high-pressure ridges; and often the result 

 is starvation diet, sickness, death. Through the cen- 

 turies man has struggled ever on and out over No Man's 

 Land, rushing the thin ice of leads, scaling towering 

 ice-caps, staggering along uncharted coasts, and wearily 

 planting his flag upon hitherto unknown truths, glorying 

 in his struggle against the elements for the accumula- 

 tion of knowledge. 



Only a few bits remain of the world's uncharted 

 regions. This was one of them — a survey of the unex- 

 plored shores of ICing Christian Island. ^^ Ah-no-uk- 

 suah! Pilt-such'Suah-taur ("Much wind and also heavy 

 drift!") was my morning greeting. Why couldn't the 

 Fates have been kinder? Let such weather come at any 

 time but this, when food was low and dogs hungry. 



