THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 513 



good deal. Seven were chosen but at the last moment we added 

 Jack, because he was fat and promising. But the day after we 

 separated from Castel's party Jack began to show symptoms of 

 severe illness. He did not become delirious as many sick 

 dogs do in the North nor did he refuse to eat, which is the com- 

 monest of all early symptoms, but he behaved as though he might 

 have severe inflammation of the bowels. Altogether our expedi- 

 tion lost perhaps a quarter of its dogs by one form or another of 

 dog disease, but most of these died at home in winter quarters and 

 it was fortunately seldom that any disease broke out in our ad- 

 vance teams. We were disturbed by the illness through its threat 

 to the rest of the team. None of us three had ever driven Jack 

 before so that we were not as attached to him as to some of the 

 other dogs, but he took his illness so bravely that before he died 

 we were thinking more of hoping he would get over it than of the 

 possible effect on our plans, 



"June 6th: Jack is very sick but has none of the ordinary 

 'dog sickness' symptoms. He is in pain, eats snow continually 

 which seems to show he has fever, and tries to vomit. He acts 

 rationally in every way. 



"June 7: Jack is in greater pain and is weaker but acts merely 

 as he might if he had some such disease as inflammation of the 

 bowels. He ate a small piece of meat to-night and I have not given 

 up hope. That was one reason we made such a short day to- 

 day. We let him walk along beside the sled. 



"June 8: We started at 1 P. M. but stopped at 3:05 P. M. to 

 give Jack a rest. He was led behind the sled by Andersen. We 

 started again at five. He was so weak then that he could not well 

 stand and Andersen had to shoot him. I was a mile or two ahead 

 walking slowly and picking trail (I did not know about Jack's death 

 until camping)." 



One June 5th we found an ice hummock with a good deal of 

 sand on it, suggesting to me that it must have been formed in the 

 vicinity of land and the next summer carried out to sea. Its ad- 

 vantage to us was that the sun striking on the black surface had 

 made a pond of water at the foot although the same sunlight strik- 

 ing on white ice had made no impression. We were able for the 

 first time to use thaw water for cooking. 



In "Farthest North," Nansen tells us that no pressure ridges are 

 more than thirty or thirty-five feet high and that accounts of pres- 

 sure ridges much higher are merely careless statements founded on 

 inaccurate observation. This statement has been much quoted and 



