EXPEDITION OF 1898-1902 325 



completely. I pitched the tent, fastened the dogs, 

 and we devoted the rest of the day to stamping a road 

 through the snow with our snowshoes. Even then, 

 when we started the next day I was obliged to put two 

 teams to one sledge in order to move it. 



Cape Payer was a hard proposition. The first half 

 of the distance round it we were obliged to cut a road, 

 and on the latter half, with twelve dogs and three men 

 to each sledge to push and pull them, snowplow fashion, 

 through the deep snow. 



Distant Cape was almost equally inhospitable, and 

 it was only after long and careful reconnoissance that 

 we were able to get our sledges past along the narrow 

 crest of the huge ridge of ice forced up against the 

 rocks. After this we had comparatively fair going, 

 on past Cape Ramsay, Dome Cape, and across Meigs 

 Fiord, as far as Mary Murry Island. Then came some 

 heavy going, and at 11:40 p. m. of May 8th we 

 reached Lockwood's cairn on the north end of Lock- 

 wood Island. From this cairn I took the record 

 and thermometer deposited there by Lockwood 

 eighteen years before. The record was in a perfect 

 state of preservation. 



One march from here carried us to Cape Washington. 

 Just at midnight we reached the low point, which is 

 visible from Lockwood Island, and great was my 

 relief, to see on rounding this point, another splendid 

 headland, with two magnificent glaciers debouching 

 near it, rising across an intervening inlet. I knew now 

 that Cape Washington was not the northern point of 

 Greenland, as I had feared. It would have been a 

 great disappointment to me, after coming so far, to 



