FROM 87° 6' TO GREENLAND COAST 143 



thought that this obstacle was at last behind us and 

 no longer to be feared. I should have known better 

 than to feel this way, for I certainly had sufficient 

 Arctic experience to know that one should never feel 

 encouraged at anything nor ever expect an>1:hing in 

 these regions except the worst. On the second march 

 south of the scar we came upon a region of huge pres- 

 sure ridges running in every direction. It was an 

 ominous sign, and I was not surprised a few hours 

 later when an Eskimo whom I had sent in advance to 

 reconnoitre a trail for the sledges, signalled to me 

 from the summit of a pinnacle "open water." When 

 I climbed to his side there was our friend the "big 

 lead," a broad band of black water, perhaps half a 

 mile in width, lying across our path and reaching 

 east and west farther than I could see. The lead here 

 was thirty to forty miles farther south than where we 

 had crossed it on the upward journey, but it was the 

 same lead. 



I turned east keeping an Eskimo scouting close to 

 the lead in search of a practicable crossing while the 

 sledges advanced parallel to the lead but at some 

 distance from it, where the going was a little better. 



Once he raised our hopes by signalling that he had 

 found it: but when the sledges came up the place was 

 impracticable. The next day we continued eastward 

 and found a mixture of half-congealed rubble-ice, 

 barely sufficient to support us, spanning the lead. The 

 sledges were hurried on to this and we were within 

 a few yards of firm ice on the south side, when our 

 bridge failed us, and the ice under us began to go apart. 

 It was a rapid and uncertain but finally successful 



