326 NEAREST THE POLE 



find that another's eyes had forestalled mine in looking 

 first upon the coveted northern point. 



Nearly all my hours for sleep at this camp were 

 taken up by observations and a round of angles. The 

 ice north from Cape Washington was in a frightful 

 condition — utterly impracticable. Leaving Cape Wash- 

 ington we crossed the mouth of the fiord, packed with 

 blue-top floe-bergs, to the western edge of one of the 

 big glaciers, and then over the extremity of the glacier 

 itself, camping near the edge of the second. Here 

 I found myself in the midst of the birthplace of the 

 "floe-bergs," which could be seen in all the various 

 stages of formation. These "floe-bergs" are merely 

 degraded ice-bergs; that is, bergs of low altitude, 

 detached from the extremity of a glacier, which has 

 for some distance been forcing its way along a com- 

 paratively level and shallow sea bottom. 



From this camp we crossed the second glacier, then 

 a small fiord, where we killed a polar bear. 



It was evident to me now that we were very near the 

 northern extremity of the land; and when we came 

 within view of the next point ahead I felt that my eyes 

 rested at last upon the Arctic Ultima Thule (Cape 

 Morris K. Jesup). The land ahead also impressed me 

 at once as showing the characteristics of a musk-ox 

 country. 



This point was reached in the next march, and I 

 stopped to take variation and latitude sights. Here 

 my Eskimo shot a hare, and we saw a wolf track and 

 traces of musk-oxen. A careful reconnoissance of the 

 pack to the northward, with glasses, from an elevation 

 of a hundred feet, showed the ice to be of a less im- 



