354 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH 



picturesque, as grand as any I saw in the North. A 

 large valley extending toward Lake Hazen opens out 

 upon the fjord at its head. On the shore about the 

 mouth of this valley we found the ruins of ancient 

 Eskimo habitations; I feel sure that the old Eskimo 

 route across Grant Land was up this fjord, and then up 

 the valley to the lake. We climbed a high mountain 

 the better to survey the pass, and were sorely tempted 

 to make an attempt to get to Lake Hazen by this ap- 

 parently easy route. We finally gave up the idea of 

 doing so, because I wished to go over the same route 

 that Lieut. J. B. Lockwood and Serg. D. L. Brainard, 

 of Greely's party, had traversed many years before. 



Musk-oxen were plentiful along the shores of the 

 fjords. We saw many tracks of bear, caribou, and wolf, 

 and of hares and ptarmigan the number was legion. 

 Fox and ennine tracks were not very common, but 

 lemming tracks netted the snow. We killed six musk- 

 oxen, two at one of our camps and four at another. 

 On the plateau where we killed the two we found the 

 ruins of Eskimo caches and fox-traps, further indicating 

 that the Eskimos had one time lived on the shore of 

 this fjord. 



May 16th we reached the head of Greely Fjord, the 

 very day that Lieutenant Lockwood and Sergeant Brain- 

 ard started homeward in 1883, thirty-two years before. 

 The head of the fjord had not changed one jot, one tittle, 

 so far as we could tell by comparing Lockwood's excel- 

 lent sketches which I carried with me, with the view 

 that stretched before us; every dark cliff, every patch 

 of snow, every gully in the slopes, appeared unchanged. 

 We followed their route and camped on the same lake 

 as they did many years before. 



