CHAPTER XXI 



ARCTIC ICE SLEDGING AS IT REALLY IS 



PERHAPS it will assist the reader to form a more 

 vivid picture of the sort of work that now lay 

 before the expedition and which the expedition 

 eventually performed, if an effort is made to make him 

 understand exactly what it means to travel nearly a 

 thousand miles with dog sledges over the ice of the 

 polar pack. In that belief, I shall at this point 

 endeavor to describe as briefly as is consistent with clear- 

 ness the conditions that confronted us and the means 

 and methods by which those conditions were met. 



Between the winter quarters of the Roosevelt at 

 Cape Sheridan, and Cape Columbia, the most northerly 

 point on the north coast of Grant Land, which I had 

 chosen as the point of departure for the ice journey, lay 

 ninety miles in a northwesterly direction along the ice- 

 foot and across the land, which we must traverse before 

 plunging onto the trackless ice fields of the Arctic 

 Ocean. 



From Cape Columbia we were to go straight north 

 over the ice of the Polar Sea, — four hundred and 

 thirteen geographical miles. Many persons whose 

 memories go back to the smooth skating ponds of their 

 childhood, picture the Arctic Ocean as a gigantic skating 

 pond with a level floor over which the dogs drag us 

 merrily — we sitting comfortably upon the sledges with 



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