340 CONQUERING THE ARCTIC ICE 



badly frightened, for our dogs, who were roaming about at 

 large, agreed to fight the common danger and raised such a 

 howl that Mr. Bruin made off in the greatest possible hurry, 

 judging by the length of his strides which we could see in the 

 snow on the following morning. We heard the noise, but 

 stayed in our warm bags and slept peacefully on, trusting to 

 our good dogs to keep our uninvited visitor at bay. 



At Oogliktoonik we cached some more food for Axel's return, 

 but even with this decrease of weight (60 Ibs.) our sledge 

 was still very heavy to pull. As it was almost impossible to 

 move the sledge and our dogs were rapidly becoming worn out, 

 we divided the load between our two sledges. Whether this 

 plan was an improvement was very doubtful, but at least we now 

 had a sledge each, the moving of which depended upon our own 

 exertions, so that we had no cause to complain of the lack of 

 energy displayed by the other party, which had been the order 

 of the day before we divided the load. At any rate on we went 

 with our divided loads, Axel with three and I with two dogs, 

 over soft and sticky snow, through the worst weather which we 

 had yet encountered, sleet, snow and fog, and without the longed 

 for fall of temperature. 



On Thursday, October 24, we reached the delta of the 

 Colville River and were entangled in the mudflats, which 

 caused us several hours' hard work. More than once we had 

 to take the sledges one at a time over the wind-swept flats, 

 where every particle of snow had been blown off, leaving the 

 gravel and silt bare. We picked up what small pieces of wood 

 we found on our march and camped at 5.30 P.M., after going 

 about eight miles in ten hours, and hoping that we had now 

 crossed the hateful flats. But camping on the salty ice was 

 very uncomfortable, our sleeping bags became soaked, and we 

 had recourse to a sort of drainage system to make the water 

 from beneath our stove run out of the tent instead of being 

 absorbed by our sleeping gear. 



To make sure of crossing the wide stretch of Harrison's Bay 

 without having to camp on the thin ice, we started before day- 

 break next morning. We placed the rest of our firewood on our 

 sledges, so as to have enough in case fortune should be against 

 us and we should be obliged to camp on the ice of the bay. 

 The mudflats, which we thought we had left behind, still 



