CHAPTER VI 



THE SUMMER EXPEDITION TO THE ICE-CAP 



NTIL our daily balloon work 

 was started at the base on the 

 Maligiakf jord, we could not 

 make preparation for the 

 expedition across the tundra 

 to the inland-ice and over its surface to carry out 

 balloon ascents. We had already arranged to have 

 four Eskimos sent in from the coast with an umiak 

 or woman's seal-skin boat and a kayak or Green- 

 land one-man boat. With these we were to take 

 our lighter prospectors' canoe. 



Dr. Nordenskjold had in 1909 made an expedi- 

 tion along the route which we proposed to follow 

 and had prepared a very crude sketch map of it, 

 so that we knew the general character of the 

 country. Abraham, one of our Eskimos, was the 

 most experienced hunter in the Holstensborg dis- 



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