AUTUMN AT CAPE SHERIDAN 57 



formed a few hundred feet outside of the Roosevelt 

 extending close past the point of Sheridan and on to 

 Belknap. But the ice which held us against the ice- 

 foot remained firmly fixed and we were unable to get 

 into the water. In the evening it had closed again. 

 Started a party of three Eskimos off for Markham 

 Inlet after -musk-oxen. After dinner three Eskimos 

 came in with the meat of four musk-oxen killed in 

 Rowan Bay, and in the evening the Porter Bay party 

 returned with the meat and skins of seven reindeer 

 killed in a valley on Fielden Peninsula. These, the 

 first specimens of this magnificent snow-white animal, 

 were from a herd of eleven surprised in a valley close 

 to Cape Joseph Henry, and among the seven was the 

 wide-antlered buck leader. These beautiful animals, 

 in their winter dress almost as white as the snow 

 which they traverse, were later found scattered over 

 the entire region from Cape Hecla to Lake Hazen, and 

 westward along the north Grant Land coast, over fifty 

 specimens in all being secured. The party reported 

 Porter Bay still filled with the unbroken ice of the 

 previous winter, and therefore impracticable for our 

 winter quarters. The night of the nth was a per- 

 fect Arctic autumn night. To the south over the land 

 the sky pearl-white; west and northwest, about the 

 couchant mass of Cape Joseph Henry, orange-yellow; 

 north, over the Polar Sea, gray- white; east and south- 

 east the snow-clad Greenland coast lay under the 

 purple shadows of the coming "Great Night." On the 

 12th a fresh southerly wind set the snow drifting 

 savagely on all the uplands, flung out a long snow- 

 banner from the summit of Rawson, and formed a 



