CHAPTER XVII 



COLDER WEATHER AND BETTER PROGRESS 



ONE effect of the gale of April 9th was that the ice which be- 

 fore had been comparatively level was now a chaos of ridges. 

 But the snow which had been falling for several days and 

 was soft and deep when the gale commenced, was now beaten so 

 hard that our feet left little impression. This was an advantage 

 nearly compensating for the roughness of the ice. But a blessing 

 beyond price was the clearing of the air and the beginning of a 

 period of cold weather and northwesterly light airs which was 

 destined to last for about two weeks. Instead of nondescript 

 weather of ten or twenty above zero, we now had propitious cold 

 of fifteen to thirty degrees below. 



Ice motion was a natural tendency for a day or two after the 

 gale, but by the 11th the firm frost had bound the floes together. 

 On April 11th we made thirteen miles and for several days a little 

 better mileage each day ; for the cold weather held and the ice grew 

 smoother as we went farther from shore until at a distance of over 

 a hundred miles we began to make twenty or twenty-five miles per 

 day. On April 13th and 14th we crossed huge floes of glare ice. 

 As this was evidently ice of the present year and as no new salty 

 ice is ever glare, these floes must have been formed in the fresh 

 water off the mouth of the Mackenzie River, and broken loose and 

 drifted a hundred miles to the northwest. 



Although the ice was in the main frozen solid, we found open 

 water every ten or fifteen miles. The leads were commonly running 

 east and west and were of uneven width. Frequently they were as 

 much as half a mile wide at the point where we struck them, but by 

 following them a mile or two in one direction or the other we usually 

 came to a place where a peninsula out from our floe met a similar 

 one from the opposite floe and thus gave a chance to cross. We 

 took soundings in most of these leads but were never able to get 

 bottom with the amount of wire we had, so we are able to say only 

 that the depth was in excess of 4,500 feet (1,386 meters). We had 

 had more wire than this when we left shore, but we had been break- 

 ing and losing it at the various soundings. 



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