KANE, MODEL OF PEARY 195 



the ice. A great part of our track lay among a succession of hummocks; 

 some of them extending in long lines fifteen and twenty feet high, and so 

 uniformly steep that we had to turn them by a considerable deviation from 

 our direct course; others that we forced our way through, far above our 

 heads in height, lying in parallel ridges with the space between too narrow 

 for the seldge to be lowered into it safely, and yet not wide enough for the 

 runners to cross without the aid of ropes to stay them. These spaces, too, were 

 generally choked with light snow, hiding the openings between the ice-frag- 

 ments. They were fearful traps to disengage a limb from; for every man 

 knew that a fracture, or a sprain even, would cost him his life. Besides all 

 this, the sledge was top-heavy with its load ; the maimed men could not bear 

 to be lashed down tight enough to secure them against falling off. Notwith- 

 standing our caution in rejecting every superfluous burden, the weight, includ- 

 ing bags and tent, was eleven hundred pounds. 



"And yet our march for the first six hours was very cheering. We made, 

 by vigorous pulls and lifts, nearly a mile an hour, and reached the new floes 

 before we were absolutely weary. Our sledge sustained the trial admirably. 

 Ohlsen, restored by hope, walked steadily at the leading-belt of the sledge- 

 lines ; and I began to feel certain of reaching our half-way station of the day 

 before, where we had left our tent. But we were still nine miles from it, 

 when, almost without premonition, we all became aware of an alarming fail- 

 ure of our energies. 



*T was of course familiar with the benumbed and almost lethargic sensa- 

 tion of extreme cold; and once, when exposed for some hours in the mid- 

 winter of Baffin's Bay, I had experienced symptoms which I compared to the 

 diffused paralysis of the electro-galvanic shock. But I had treated the sleepy 

 comfort of freezing as something like the embellishment of romance. I had 

 evidence now to the contrary. 



"Bonsall and Morton, two of our stoutest men, came to me, begging per- 

 mission to sleep ; but Dr. Kane refused the permission, knowing that to sleep 

 where they then were meant death. At last, however, they reached a point 

 of temporary safety, and slept ; and, says Dr. Kane, 'when I awoke, my long 

 beard was a mass of ice, frozen fast to the buffalo-skin. Godfrey had to cut 

 me out with his jack-knife.' " ' 



On proceeding, they came to a huge mass of ice-hummocks. Says the 

 explorer : 



"It required desperate efforts to work our way over it — literally des- 



