342 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



minutes we became as soaking wet as if it it had been a tropical 

 shower. When we got to the land we found it clayey and at first 

 everything seemed mud, but one grassy patch made a tolerably 

 comfortable camp spot. When you keep your sleeping gear dry 

 you can always get comfortable by taking off your clothes and 

 going to bed. Winter travel is much more comfortable than sum- 

 mer, but it is rarely indeed that we are uncomfortable even in 

 summer, or if we are it is only a temporary matter, mitigated by 

 the knowledge that we shall presently be comfortable again. Il 

 is not much worse than being hungry when you know that a square 

 meal is only a little way off. 



"Wednesday, June 23rd," says the diary, "was a day of snow 

 and fog on which we camped early in the morning and slept all day. 

 This makes a bad beginning for a diary volume, but Ole says a 

 bad beginning makes a good ending." This is the first entry of the 

 book that runs from June 23rd to December 6th, 1915. It proved 

 one more old saying to be wrong by ending worse than it began, 

 but it is too early to tell about that now. 



June 24th when the weather cleared we could still see the Lef- 

 fingwell Crags forty or fifty miles to the north. They are the 

 most peculiar and most conspicuous landmark we found on any of 

 the lands we discovered. 



Eight Bears Island turned out to be some five or six miles east 

 of McClintock's Fitzwilliam Owen Island. The two are similar 

 though Owen Island is perhaps a little larger. Each is rolling land 

 with grass and moss. Eight Bears Island is less than four miles in 

 its greatest diameter and about two miles wide. Here appeared 

 the first ptarmigan of the year and Thomsen shot one so that we 

 might make sure which kind it was — a rock ptarmigan. We saw 

 also a few dozen Hutchins geese. A dozen seals could be seen 

 from camp and of these Storkerson killed one and Ole another. 

 We did not need two and Ole killed his "for practice." This was 

 the last of the practice hunting. 



It was on Eight Bears Island that we found the ancient and 

 far-decayed skull of a female ovibos. I have often wondered how 

 it got there, for this is our only evidence that these animals may 

 migrate from island to island. In our experience they avoid sea ice 

 scrupulously, never going much more than a hundred yards from 

 land. But this cow apparently had come across from some other 

 island, unless she was a survivor from the times when the various 

 islands were a connected land. That is by no means impossible, 

 for although the skull was not petrified, it might have been pre- 



