i902] SIR L. McCLINTOCK ON SLEDGING 301 



wind until, having become like the finest sand and hardened 

 under a severe temperature, it consolidates into a covering of 

 a few inches in depth and becomes so compact that the sledge- 

 runner does not sink more than an inch or so. . . . This 

 expanse of snow is rarely smooth ; its surface is broken into 

 ridges or furrows by the strong winds. These ridges are the 

 sastrugi of Admiral Wrangell ; and although the inequalities 

 are seldom more than a foot high, they add greatly to the 

 labour of travelling, especially when obliged to cross them at 

 right angles. . . . 



' . . . Having accompanied Sir James Ross on his sledge 

 journey in 1849, I was entrusted with the preparations for 

 sledge-travelling in the second and third search expeditions 

 under Austin and Belcher ; and this method now became 

 recognised as an important feature of these voyages. 



1 The utmost attention was devoted to the travelling equip- 

 ments and the methods adopted by Wrangell and other distin- 

 guished Arctic travellers ; and the spring parties of the second 

 expedition set out in 185 1 on April 15, instead of May 15 as 

 in 1849, and sledges carrying forty days' provisions were dragged 

 with less labour than thirty days' rations had previously occa- 

 sioned. Moreover, the allowance was a more liberal one. 

 The result was a corresponding increase of work done — one 

 party remaining absent for eighty days and making a journey of 

 900 miles. But in 1853 and 1854 the sledge parties of the 

 third searching expedition did still better service — one party 

 accomplished about 1,400 miles in 105 days. Another party, 

 having several depots along its line of route and favourable 

 circumstances generally, travelled nearly 1,350 miles in seventy 

 days.' 



From the above it will be clearly seen that to the English 

 explorers of the early nineteenth century belong the honour of 

 being the first to discover that, again to quote Sir Leopold, 

 ' the ice which arrests the progress of the ship forms the high- 

 way for the sledge ' ; they were the first civilised beings to use 

 that highway, and on it they accomplished work which has 

 remained, and will probably remain, unsurpassed. Of his own 



