m FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [Mar. 



in the Peary Channel which he had begun in 1912. 

 The rules of Arctic work demanded that I sacrifice all 

 in his favof, and look elsewhere for a rounding out of 

 our four years' work. 



Browsing among my Arctic books a few weeks later, 

 the following quotation from a paper read by Sir Clem- 

 ents Markham before the Royal Geographical Society 

 attracted my attention: 



Next to northern Greenland, the most interesting part of the un- 

 known region is the land on the western side of the northern part 

 of Baffin Bay, between Smith Sound and Jones Sound, and extend- 

 ing along the Jones Sound to the west and north. It was named 

 Ellesmere Land by Sir Edward Inglefield, who saw it from the deck 

 of the Isabella in 1852. It is called Oo-ming-man (the land of the 

 musk-oxen) by the Eskimos. No one, so far as we know, has ever 

 landed between Jones Sound and Smith Sound. 



Since the above was TVTitten, Mr. H. G. Bryant, 

 president of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, 

 had landed upon this coast at Cape Faraday and at 

 Clarence Head, when in charge of the Peary Relief 

 Expedition of 1892. 



For three years, from the high hills surrounding 

 Foulke Fiord, I had watched the sun rolling along over 

 those snow-capped mountains to the west; had tried 

 to penetrate with my glasses those deep fiords; and had 

 followed the coast far to the south to the vanishing- 

 point. I decided that this should be my fourth year's 

 work— the exploration and survey of the Ellesmere 

 Land coast from Cape Sabine to Clarence Head. 



The stretch of coast-line, as laid down upon the 

 latest maps, is quite inaccurate, due to the fact that the 

 information was acquired from a ship's deck several 

 miles from the shore. On account of the prevailing 



