296 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [May 



some months. From now on it is new country, only two points of 

 which a man has touched, namely Cape Faraday and Clarence 



Head. 



Owing to the late storm, the going is now good. Fortunately, our 

 loads are light or we should not have reached this point. Open 

 water around end of cape; therefore we ascended over the Wyville 

 Thompson Glacier. The perspiration ran down our bodies in 

 streams; and what a time coming down! A shoot the chute, a loop 

 the loop, and an aerial railway all in one! It was certainly exciting; 

 I felt Hke going back and trying it over again. ^ 



Arklio was ahead and knew where he was going. I didn't! ^ See- 

 ing him disappear around a sharp turn with his dogs in tow, I whipped 

 my dogs to the rear, seized the handle-bars, and followed. There 

 is a law of falling bodies which runs: "Sixteen feet the first second, 

 thirty-two the next, etc., etc." It was not many seconds before I 

 was in the etc., etc., and still going somewhere. As I shot around 

 the corner with all my brakes on and wheel hard astarboard, I saw 

 ArkUo crawhng out of a snowbank at the foot of the slope. Would 

 I clear him or strike him, was my first thought? In spite of every 

 effort, the sledge slewed around broadside on, and away she 

 went over and over so rapidly that, although my sledge-bag and 

 biscuit-tin were open, not a tiling came out! I looped only 



once! 



Chuckling a bit, I confess, we quickly cleared the wreck from 

 the track for the two unsuspecting express trains which we knew were 

 to follow at any moment. Around they came, one following the other 

 closely. Braced back to the hmit, with liis sturdy short legs plow- 

 ing a furrow, and the southernmost part of his body almost drag- 

 ging the ground, E-took-a-shoo was a picture of activity and energy. 

 If anything happened, he was a "gonner"; he would surely have 

 been spitted by the rapidly following sledge. 



His grip, his eye, his judgment, his muscles — all had been trained 

 by generations of such experiences, and down he sailed like a bird, 

 as did the man behind him. 



Nestling among the hills, there were two frozen lakes, 

 one of which was perhaps a half-mile long and a quarter- 

 mile wide; the other nearly circular and about 300 yards 

 in diameter. 



Reaching the shore by a descent of the outlet bed, 

 we discovered the remains of a sledge belonging to one 



