APPENDIX 711 



cached their load and returned to Shipwreck Camp. On the return 

 trip they met the Doctor's party and found them in pretty bad shape. 

 The sailor, Morris, had blood poisoning in one of his hands and poor 

 Beuchat had frozen both feet from the ankles down and both hands 

 from the wrists solid. He couldn't get his boots and stockings on or 

 his mittens, and he was in a very pitiable plight. The most cheerful 

 one seemed to be Murray. The Doctor appeared all in. They were 

 double tripping their stuff and Beuchat remained at the camp to look 

 out for their things. Chafe wanted him to return to Shipwreck Camp 

 but Beuchat would not. He knew we could not do anything for him 

 there. We did not even have any medicine, for when the ship was 

 crushed no medical supplies were taken off except a small traveling 

 medical chest brought off by the chief engineer. The Doctor's party 

 was never seen or heard of again, nor any trace of them found. 



That evening the Captain informed me that on the 12th of the 

 month I would leave with the two engineers, two firemen, Malloch, 

 Chafe and one sailor. We would have two sleds and would go to 

 Wrangel Island. The chief engineer was in command. The Captain 

 told me he would not put me in charge as the Government wouldn't 

 stand for it, as I was inferior in rank to the engineer. But I was 

 to advise the engineer what to do. 



The next day we got everything ready. We had a lot of collapsible 

 iron stoves for burning driftwood and I wanted to take two of them 

 along to Wrangel Island so we could use wood for fuel. They weighed 

 only a few pounds. The Captain did not approve of this, however, 

 and gave us orders to burn kerosene instead of driftwood. We started 

 with a light load and we were to replenish our loads as we went along 

 from the depots which had been made at the Captain's orders at 

 various intervals towards land. I should judge we had nine hundred 

 pounds to a sled and five dogs. We had one Mannlicher rifle for each 

 sled and three hundred rounds of ammunition for each rifle. We also 

 had one .22 caliber rifle with five hundred rounds. 



About nine o'clock February 12th the chief engineer's party started 

 from Shipwreck Camp towards shore with me in it. We tried to 

 follow the old trail made by the sledges when they were carrying out 

 the supplies which had been cached in several depots at varying dis- 

 tances from Shipwreck Camp along a line running towards shore. We 

 found the trail broken by ice movement and difficult or impossible to 

 follow. In some places we would come to where the trail ended 

 abruptly along a line of ice movement and after long search we might 

 find it two or three miles to one side or the other. Usually it was found 

 to the left, for the farther away from Wrangel Island the ice was the 

 faster it was drifting to the west. Our progress was pretty slow, for 

 in addition to searching for the trail we had to chop a road through 

 pressure ridges frequently with the pickaxes. Our reason for trying 

 to follow the old trail was to see if we could find any of the depots. 



