262 



CONQUERING THE ARCTIC ICE 



was a depressing sight which met our eyes from the top, rubble 

 and water-lanes being the only things visible, save for a small 

 stretch of young ice close at hand. All the afternoon we hauled 

 at the pulling ropes, or navigated lanes, or for a change we 

 lifted the sledges to the top of a ridge and lowered them care- 

 fully down, trying to avoid the sharp pieces of ice which bristled 



on every side. It is heavy 

 work, and when we camped 

 at 5 P.M., after eleven hours' 

 hard labour, we had only 

 made about two and a half 

 or three miles, and this with 

 light sledges ! We wonder 

 what it would have been like 

 to pass this ice with loaded 

 sledges, and how far we 

 would have got on our way 

 out if we had had this kind 

 of ice to right against. The 

 weights of the sledges are 

 now : Mr. Leffingwell's 

 325 Ibs., Storkersen's 310 Ibs., 

 and mine 83 Ibs. We regret 

 very much that it is still too 

 dark to travel at night, as 

 the snowdrifts are decidedly 

 harder early in the morning 

 than later in the day, but 

 even as it is I hope we 

 shall be able to cover the 

 thirty miles which still divide us from the lagoon. 



Latitude 71 oi''5 N. Sounding 46 metres. Temperature 

 at start -11 C, at noon-y C. Wind N.E., in the morning 

 four miles an hour, at night fifteen. Rapid drift to the 

 W.N.W. 



Thursday, May 2. Off at 6 A.M., and at once struck water, 

 but the lanes, save one, were not too wide to jump. At 10.30 

 we came to some very small floes with high pressure-ridges all 

 round them, and from them we could see what was practically 

 an open sea. The ice ahead was all in small pieces intersected 



THE HIGHEST PRESSURE-RIDGE WE 

 HAVE SEEN YET. 



