SHERIDAN TO THE BIG LEAD 109 



camp. While at this camp the Captain came in, 

 having been six marches from Hecla. The men sent 

 out on Henson's trail reported that the going beyond 

 here was the best yet. 

 I quote from my Journal: 



March ijth. — A glorious day, clear as a crystal and 

 the sun is shining nearly twelve hours. The land dis- 

 tinctly visible, but not as far away as I could wish. 

 The Captain and his party pulled out early and Clark 

 and his party soon after. I brought up the rear a 

 little later with my party. 



After working through about a mile of fearfully 

 rough ice, we came out upon what looked as if it might 

 be (and God knows I hoped it was) the comparatively 

 unbroken homogeneous ice of the central Polar Sea. 

 A beautiful sight, the level, slightly drifted snow plain 

 stretching away apparently infinitely to the North. 



March iSth. — Another glorious day but bitterly cold, 

 the brandy remaining frozen and the petroleum 

 white and viscid ; my dogs very tired and unambitious. 

 It is aggravating not to be travelling faster in such 

 weather and going, and it is not pleasant to be at the 

 rear attending to loose ends, but I have the consola- 

 tion of knowing that my advance parties are, or 

 ought to be, a good distance ahead, and that before 

 long I shall be in my proper place at the very head of 

 the line, breasting the air that comes direct from the 

 pole uncontaminated by any form of life. At this 

 camp one new sledge was made out of two broken ones. 



And so the work went on, the parties going and 



