216 THENORTHPOLE 



clothed than we were would have found conditions 

 very trying that morning. Some parties would have 

 considered the weather impossible for traveling, and 

 would have gone back to their igloos. 



But, taught by the experience of three years before, 

 I had given the members of my party instructions to 

 wear their old winter clothing from the ship to Cape 

 Columbia and while there, and to put on the new outfit 

 made for the sledge journey when leaving Columbia. 

 Therefore we were all in our new and perfectly dry fur 

 clothes and could bid defiance to the wind. 



One by one the divisions drew out from the main 

 army of sledges and dog teams, took up Bartlett's 

 trail over the ice and disappeared to the northward in 

 the wind haze. This departure of the procession was a 

 noiseless one, for the freezing east wind carried all 

 sounds away. It was also invisible after the first few 

 moments — men and dogs being swallowed up almost 

 immediately in the wind haze and the drifting snow. 



I finally brought up the rear with my own division, 

 after getting things into some semblance of order, and 

 giving the two disabled men left at Cape Columbia their 

 final instructions to remain quietly in the igloo there, 

 using certain supplies which were left with them until 

 the first supporting party returned to Cape Columbia, 

 when they were to go back with it to the ship. 



An hour after I left camp my division had crossed the 

 glacial fringe, and the last man, sledge, and dog of 

 the Northern party — comprising altogether twenty- 

 four men, nineteen sledges, and one hundred and thirty- 

 three dogs — was at last on the ice of the Arctic Ocean, 

 about latitude 83°. 



