532 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



oughly rotten. Still, we had always been able to keep our sleeping 

 bags dry — except when the sled upset — and to sleep in them com- 

 fortably every night. But it had been a hard struggle. 



We rebuilt MacMillan's cairn with mud and tin cans, for we 

 grudged to leave behind any of the boards except a sliver to which 

 we fastened the same can that had contained MacMillan's record. 

 It now contains a record reading as follows: 



"July 20, 1916. 



"Arrived here from the north at 8:10 P. M. local time to-day and 

 found a cairn of earth with tins and a wooden box on top. In one corner 

 of the box we found secured by bent nails a Kodak film tin sealed with 

 tape. This contained the following record, written on a letterhead of the 

 Crocker Land Expedition (George Borup Memorial.) 



(Here follows copy of MacMillan's Record:) 



"We are taking the original of the record and leaving this copy in 

 its place, contained in the same tin from which we removed MacMillan's 

 record. All boards that are here we are taking to use under our bed 

 skins on the ice, otherwise we are rebuilding the cairn of the tins it 

 contained and enlarging the heap of earth. 



"We are on our way south from an island that has its north point 

 about North Latitude 80° 10', about 5 degrees of longitude east of 

 Cape Isachsen. We intend to follow the east and south coasts of Findlay 

 Island to determine if it is one land with that discovered by us in 1915 

 north of Prince Patrick Island. If we knew that MacMillan had finished 

 mapping certain parts of Findlay Island and had omitted others, we 

 would try to do what is left, but for lack of information we may unin- 

 tentionally duplicate his work. 



"We intend to spend the summer in the land found in 1915, if we 

 can reach it, putting up meat for sledge provisions for the ice explora- 

 tion of the spring 1917. Men, sleds and dogs (7) all in good condition 

 but dog harness getting rotten from being continually wet. 

 WITNESS : "For the Canadian Arctic Expedition, 



Karsten Andersen, Vilhjahnur Stefansson, 



Harold Noice. Commander." 



Events of the next few days cannot be understood without a 

 careful look at the map. We had the latest and most authoritative 

 Admiralty chart No. 2118, entitled "Discoveries in the Arctic Sea," 

 and containing the annotation, "With corrections to 1902." This 

 meant that it was now in the form it had after Captain Sverdrup's 

 additions and corrections had been incorporated into it. The map 

 we publish on the opposite page is substantially identical with the 

 Admiralty chart, but to be sure there is no error of transference 



