EXPEDITION OF 1898-1902 327 



practicable character than it was north of Cape Wash- 

 ington. What were evidently water clouds showed 

 very distinctly on the horizon. This water sky had 

 been apparent ever since we left Cape Washington, 

 and at one time assumed such a shape that I was almost 

 deceived into taking it for land. Continued careful 

 observation destroyed the illusion. My observations 

 completed, we started northward over the pack, and 

 camped a few miles from land. 



The two following marches were made in a thick 

 fog, through which we groped our way northward, 

 over broken ice and across gigantic, wavelike drifts 

 of hard snow. One more march in clear weather over 

 frightful going — consisting of fragments of old floes; 

 ridges of heavy ice thrown up to heights of twenty- 

 five to fifty feet; crevasses and holes, masked by snow; 

 the whole intersected by narrow leads of open water — 

 brought us at 5 A. m. on the i6th of May to the northern 

 edge of a fragment of an old floe bounded by water. 

 A reconnoissance from the summit of a pinnacle of the 

 floe, some fifty feet high, showed that we were on the 

 edge of the disintegrated pack, with a dense water sky 

 not far distant. 



My hours for sleep at this camp were occupied in 

 observations, and making a transit profile of the north- 

 em coast from Cape Washington eastward. 



The next day I started back for the land, reached it 

 in one long march and camped. 



Within a mile of our next camp a herd of fifteen 

 musk-oxen lay fast asleep; I left them undisturbed. 

 From here on, for three marches, we made great dis- 

 tances over good going, in blinding sunshine, and in the 



