THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 295 



the North Star so as to have her next summer to make this more 

 northerly base in the fall. The only man to fetch her from Corona- 

 tion Gulf was Wilkins and I reluctantly delegated him to that job. 

 The reluctance was not merely because he would have made ai 

 good ice man; I had three good men, all that could be used when 

 we had only two strong sleds and two good dog teams. But had 

 he been able to spend the summer on Banks Island he could have 

 added greatly by photographs and observations set down in his 

 notebooks to our knowledge of the topography, geology and nat- 

 ural history of this interesting and fertile land. It was our home 

 for several years, but because of the paramount importance of 

 searching the Beaufort Sea to the west and north for lands and 

 deeps and currents and other data of that hidden region, we 

 crossed Banks Island always too hurriedly, and brought back 

 at the end of the expedition no really comprehensive account of its 

 geology, geography or zoology. 



Because the season was already so late we took rather more 

 risk on this sea ice journey than I consider generally justifiable 

 in polar work. On April 10th, for instance, we camped at the 

 southern edge of a level expanse of ice of unknown width. I ex- 

 amined it in the evening and found it about four inches thick, 

 not strong enough to bear a sled, but that night we had an ex- 

 ceptionally hard freeze and the next morning it was between six 

 and seven inches thick. This is quite thick enough for loaded 

 sledges if the area to be crossed is a limited one, and no matter 

 what the area it is safe so long as the ice remains unbroken. But 

 ice of this thickness, as indeed of any thickness, may at any time 

 be broken up by increase in the strength of a current or the sud-( 

 den oncoming of a gale. If the ice is thick no great danger to life 

 results, for then a cake of almost any size will be a refuge for men 

 and dogs, but if six-inch ice commences to break up no cake 

 is safe unless it is of great area; and under the strain cakes 

 naturally break into smaller and smaller pieces. If we were to 

 find ourselves with a loaded dog-sled on a piece not much bigger 

 than is necessary for the men and dogs to stand on, the cake 

 would either tip on edge, spilling us into the water, or actually 

 sink under our weight. 



It is not often that we have found perfectly level ice to be 

 more than five miles across, and the morning of the 11th when 

 we started out on this six-inch ice we expected to cross it in an 

 hour. But we found it sticky with the salt crystals on its surface, 

 as indeed it was bound to be, and this interfered with speed so that 



