FROM 87° 6' TO GREENLAND COAST 149 



driven eastward, had come down upon the Greenland 

 coast, and Clark's Eskimos like mine, possessed with 

 the crazy idea that they had drifted westward and 

 were coming down "the back side of Grant Land," 

 as they expressed it, had insisted on turning east and 

 were going directly away from the ship. My two men 

 had found them a few miles east of our camp in what 

 would have been their last camp. They were ex- 

 hausted, had lived for a few days upon their spare 

 skin boots, had with them three apologies for dogs 

 which they were about to kill, and a little later would 

 have come the finish. With new life given by the news 

 that I was so near, they had summoned energy enough 

 to walk to our camp, but they came in skull-faced 

 and wavering in gait. Fortunately I could give them 

 something to eat, as more hare had been killed since 

 the two men went out. I had also sent two men, with 

 an exhausted dog for rations, round into Mascart 

 Inlet to look for musk-oxen, and while awaiting their 

 return, I climbed to the highest point in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the Cape, after sending out two other 

 Eskimos for hare, where I could examine the going as 

 far as Britannia and Beaumont Islands. I was very 

 thankful to see that the edge of the bay ice was farther 

 off than in 1900, and that the surface across the bays 

 was smooth and level. I knew that it was likely to 

 be more or less soft, but we had our snowshoes with 

 us, and it is surprising what distance men with a 

 little dogged sand in them can cover, even though 

 half-starved and almost exhausted, when it is simply 

 a matter of throwing one's weight forward a little and 

 sliding one snowshoe past the other, imtil the last 



