EXPEDITION OF 1898-1902 343 



dently had been widened (though not newly formed) 

 by the storm of the day before, to dose up or freeze 

 over. During our first sleep at this camp there was a 

 slight motion of the lead, but not enough to make it 

 practicable. From here I sent back two more Eskimos. 



Late in the afternoon of the 14th the lead began to 

 close, and hastily packing the sledges we hurried them 

 across over moving fragments of ice. We now found 

 ourselves in a zone of high parallel ridges of rubble ice 

 covered with deep snow. These ridges were caused 

 by successive opening and closing of the lead. When, 

 after some time, we found a practicable pass through 

 this barrier, we emerged upon a series of very small 

 but extremely heavy and rugged old floes; the snow 

 on them still deeper and softer than on the southern 

 side of the lead. At the end of a sixteen-hour day I 

 called a halt, though we were only two or three miles 

 north of the big lead. 



During the first portion of the next march we passed 

 over fragments of very heavy old floes slowly moving 

 eastward. Frequently we were obliged to wait for the 

 pieces to crush close enough together to let us pass 

 from one to the other. Farther on I was compelled 

 to bear away due east by an impracticable area extend- 

 ing west, northwest, north and northeast as far as could 

 be seen, and just as we had rounded this and were 

 bearing away to the north again, we were brought up 

 by a lead some fifty feet wide. From this on, one day 

 was much like another, sometimes doing a little better 

 sometimes a little worse, but the daily advance, in spite 

 of our best efforts, steadily decreasing. Fog and 

 stormy weather also helped to delay us. 



