iTiai-ch, I^s«!>.| Readiness for Another Sledge Journey. 373 



distance in a rue-rad-dy (liarness) with a sled-load of 429 pounds, the 

 sled-shoeing- of which was iced moss. Healthful occupation of the 

 mind, devotion to the work still before him, and a continued friendly 

 intercourse with the natives and participation in their amusements 

 and hunts were, doubtless, the additional causes of his freedom from 

 sickness and casualty during- this season, as they had been through 

 the preceding four winters. 



By the 21st of March he had nearly completed his preparations 

 for a start. To secure dogs and their food, three trips were made inland 

 and two to a settlement on the ice; requiring in all a journey of 170 

 miles. Nearly six hundred balls were molded over a coal-fire in a 

 small stove belonging to Ar-moii. The stores which he was to leave 

 behind were placed in charge of his Innuit friends to whom presents 

 were made, the packages of which were each labeled with a tag having 

 on it the picture of an animal, as a help to Ar-moii's memory in deliver- 

 ing them to each friend. All appear to have been at this time cor- 

 dial well-wishers of his success, a goodly number of them being pro- 

 fessedly ready to go with him.* 



*They were probably again ready ior a change. The two })recc(liiig months had been to 

 them a season of unusual suffering from cold, and at times from Avant. But few seals had been 

 caught. The severity of the cold had been experienced throughout a fearful gale in January, 

 lasting through ten consecutive days; and in February there was the unprecedented occurrence 

 of a burying up of their snovv' village, closely endangering the lives of all the Innuits. In one of 

 the huts, a child, which had rolled a little way out from its mother's sleeping-robe, froze into ice. 

 The Journal of January 25 had read : "Still another day (the seventh) of the severest storm I have 

 ever witnessed. All day yesterday, the wind was but one degree less than a hurricane force ; and 

 it was with great danger that I ventured out from the tooJcsoo, to visit my Wind Indicator, though 

 the distance is not more than 20 yards. The storm is right abeam, and the only way to keep 

 myself erect is by strong bracing against and reclining on the v,-ind; yet with all this precaution, 

 now and then the wind will lift and drive me tumbling and rolling like a drunken man. It has 

 been so charged too with <lrift, that it has been impo.ssible to designate whether the sky was 

 clouded or fair: I suspect that the latter is the case, for I could sec the moon to-night dimly 

 through the drift, which appeared to be the only obstruction. This p. m. the drift changed from 

 the soft, pliant, im])aetable kind to that of dry sand (so to speak); and then hi/ attrition the snow- 

 walls of oar ediiices began to be destroyed. An alarming fact was then ])ali)abl( — that we shoula 



