226 NEAREST THE POLE 



perhaps a little better at the end, but I got my worst 

 wetting, a slip of my feet while pushing the sledges 

 over a bad place, sending me into the water up to my 

 waist. This rendered the latter part of the march 

 somewhat uncomfortable. 



But one gets used to this constant wetting (as they 

 say one gets used to an3rthing) and I no longer mind 

 my saturated clothing. 



I wring it out when I turn in, and give it another 

 twist when I turn out. It has reminded me of my 

 Nicaraguan experiences, but the temperature of both 

 air and water is somewhat different here. 



The sun shone a little at the last camp and during 

 perhaps half of this march, but we have faced through- 

 out the march, a strong and searching northeast wind 

 with the temperature below the freezing point. 



The glacier west of Cape Fanshawe Martin is an 

 active one; its face ten feet to forty feet high. A 

 detached "floeberg" which I estimated to be one and 

 one-quarter miles long, and one-half mile wide, lies 

 frozen in a hundred yards or so off its face The face 

 of this "floeberg " would average twenty feet to twenty- 

 eight feet above the water Two Arctic terns flew 

 over us while we were coming round the Cape. 



McClintock Bay, Jui,y i^th. — The wmd blew con- 

 tinuously and violently at the last camp, and the sun 

 shone occasionally and was shining when we started. 



I thought I would try the inside route, i. e. along 

 the tidal crack well into the bay, but an hour's travel- 

 ling along the glacier face, brought us to a position 

 where I could overlook the bay, and I saw at once 



