234 NEAREST THE POLE 



had been a far cry beyond since then. A short 

 distance beyond the apex began an ice-foot lake. The 

 tent and camp gear we backed around this along the 

 steep slope of the talus, pitched the tent and made 

 supper, then the men went back after more loads, 

 then another trip for the sledges which were floated 

 along. Another dog played out in this march and was 

 killed. 



A long and hard day. Several fossils were observed 

 in the rocks and at the extremity of the cape, and one 

 was secured. 



The next march, in spite of every exertion, took us 

 only to View Point. With open water and shattered ice 

 on one side, and the entirely impracticable ice-foot 

 lake and Cape Henry cliffs on the other, our only 

 possible route was the crest of the stupendous and 

 now doubly ragged and chasm- intersected ice-foot. 

 Along this, after I had dug out a tortuous road with a 

 pickaxe, the sledges, one at a time, were pushed, 

 dragged, hauled, hoisted and lowered by all of us, and 

 sometimes unloaded and backed over the roughest 

 places. 



Then the snow slopes of the shore, interrupted with 

 patches of bare rocks, past Hamilton Fish Peak, then 

 the sea ice less broken here, then the shore snow, 

 and a river and strip of bare land, over which the 

 sledges were run on pole rollers, and finally to our camp 

 on dry gravel at View Point, the first time this side of 

 Columbia. An arduous march, long in time but short 

 in distance. Fortunately the finest of weather. 



Cape Joseph Henry is the most satisfying perhaps 

 of any of these northern capes, in an aesthetic sense. 



