EXPEDITION OF 1898- 1902 345 



utilise as much of our tracks as possible before they were 

 obliterated. It was very difficult to keep the trail 

 in the uncertain light and driving snow. We lost it 

 repeatedly, when we would be obliged to quarter the 

 surface like bird dogs. On reaching the last lead of 

 the upward march, instead of the open water which 

 had interrupted our progress then, our tracks now 

 disappeared under a huge pressure ridge, which I 

 estimated to be from seventy-five to one hundred feet 

 high. Our trail was faulted here by the movement of 

 the floes, and we lost time in picking it up on the other 

 side. 



This was to me a trying march. I had had no 

 sleep the night before, and to the physical strain of 

 handling my sledge was added the mental tax of trying 

 to keep the trail. When we finally camped, it was 

 only for a few hours, for I recognised that the entire 

 pack was moving slowly, and that our trail was every- 

 where being faulted and interrupted by new pressure 

 ridges and leads, in a way to make our return march 

 nearly, if not quite, as slow and laborious as the out- 

 ward one. The following marches were much the 

 same. In crossing one lead I narrowly escaped losing 

 two sledges and the dogs attached to them. Ar- 

 rived at the "Grand Canal," as I called the big lead 

 at which I had sent two Eskimos back, the changes 

 had been such as to make the place almost unrecog- 

 nisable. 



Two marches south of the Grand Canal the changes 

 in the ice had been such, between the time of our up- 

 ward trip and the return of my two men from the canal, 

 that they, experienced as they were in all that pertains 



