PREPARING FOR ARCTIC DAY 225 



traveling through the rough ice of Smith Sound. 

 Cases of goods had to be made ready, and many 

 chores to be done that had been neglected during the 

 period of continuous night. 



Long daily tramps on the ice foot varied the 

 monotony. One day Billy Pritchard and I walked 

 down to the boat, which it will be remembered had 

 been abandoned several miles south of Annootok in 

 the autumn. We found it deep buried under a drift, 

 and shoveled it out. On our return we left the ice 

 foot for the Sound ice, and Billy fell to his armpits 

 in a snow-covered fissure. I had a great deal of 

 trouble getting him out. In the fall he scraped both 

 his arms badly and injured his left knee so severely 

 that it was with difficulty he finally succeeded in walk- 

 ing back to camp. How the Eskimos are able to run 

 over the rough ice I never could understand; but they 

 do it with apparently no regard to the holes and 

 cracks, and seldom fall or slip. I often tried to fol- 

 low them, but was certain to be left far in the rear 

 and to find every fissure and hole. 



This was February eighteenth, the date that Mr. 

 Peary told me he expected to leave the ship for his 

 dash to the Pole. I recalled it after the return from 

 our walk. In honor of it I opened a bottle and we 

 drank his health, wished him the best of luck and 

 hoped for his safe return. My own experiences dur- 

 ing the six months that had elapsed since the Erik 

 left me on the rocks at Etah had given me an insight 

 into the difficulties and hardships of Arctic explora- 

 tion, and brought to me a realization of the degree of 



