226 CONQUERING THE ARCTIC ICE 



pitched our tent on ice which was rather too thin to be quite 

 comfortable. However, there is much still thinner ice about 

 us, and, if it should come to a squeeze during the night, this 

 would act as a buffer and get cracked and piled up before our 

 floe would be unsafe. 



We made about seven miles S.E. Temperature at start, 

 1 8 C.; at noon, 15 C. Weather thick and gloomy. 

 Wind N.E., about five miles an hour, but increasing. 



Saturday, April 13. As soon as breakfast was finished we 

 went down to the lane to see how things were. During the 

 night it had closed up, so that it was now only about thirty yards 

 wide, and we easily found a road firm enough to carry men and 

 sledges. Getting the tent down, the dogs hitched, and starting 

 was a matter of minutes, and with the pickaxes we worked our 

 way through the ridge on the edge of the floe and crossed the 

 lane. After that we struck beautiful ice, large old icefloes 

 with hard snow and fairly level road, the dogs pulled eagerly, 

 and for a while everything went well. It was clear, or fairly 

 so, when we started, but at 9.30 it commenced to get cloudy, 

 and the wind came in heavy squalls. At 10.20 A.M. we were 

 hurriedly pitching camp to get out of the strong snowdrift 

 raised by a twenty-five miles gale. 



We have had a novel experience to-day ; for the first time since 

 we left land we have been able to leave our pickaxe in peace on 

 my sledge, having only used it for some few minutes at the 

 beginning of the day's work. We can only hope that this kind 

 of going will be more common in the future than it has been in 

 the past. 



Once inside the tent, the old problem is revived, is there land 

 or not in Beaufort Sea ? We discuss it from all sides and take 

 the different so-called proofs under careful consideration. One 

 by one they are discussed and dismissed ; the narrow Con- 

 tinental Shelf stands up against them all as a crushing evidence 

 for " No Land." But time after time we ask how can this, 

 how can that, be explained? There is the heavy old ice, this 

 magnificent icefloe with hills as high as thirty feet from base 

 to summit. These wonders of Beaufort Sea, this characteristic 

 Beaufort Sea ice, these floes, which must be so immensely old 

 in order to have acquired their dimensions, the thickness which 

 some of this old ice has how can they be explained but by 



