EXPEDITION OF 1 898-1 902 307 



Cracroft and dig a burrow in a snowdrift. When the 

 storm ceased, I left him with another Eskimo and nine 

 of the poorer dogs, and pushed on to reach Fort 

 Conger. 



The moon had left us entirely now, and the ice-foot 

 was utterly impracticable, and we groped and stumbled 

 through the rugged sea ice as far as Cape Baird. Here 

 we slept a few hours in a burrow in the snow, then 

 started across Lady Franklin Bay. In complete dark- 

 ness and over a chaos of broken and heaved-up ice, 

 we stumbled and fell and groped for eighteen hours, 

 till we climbed upon the ice-foot of the north side. 

 Here a dog was killed for food. 



Absence of suitable snow put an igloo out of the 

 question, and a semi-cave under a large cake of ice 

 was so cold that we could stop only long enough to 

 make tea. Here I left a broken sledge and nine ex- 

 hausted dogs. Just east of us a floe had been driven 

 ashore, and forced up over the ice-foot till its shattered 

 fragments lay a hundred feet up the talus of the bluff. 

 It seemed impassable, but the crack at the edge of the 

 ice-foot allowed us to squeeze through; and soon after 

 we rounded the point, and I was satisfied by the " feel " 

 of the shore, for we could see nothing, that we were 

 at one of the entrances of Discovery Harbour, but 

 which, I could not tell. 



Several hours of groping showed that it was the 

 eastern entrance. We had struck the centre of Bellot 

 Island, and at midnight of January 6th we were stum- 

 bling through the dilapidated door of Fort Conger. A 

 little remaining oil enabled me, by the light of our 

 sledge cooker, to find the range and the stove in the 



