THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 497 



traveling at that time. The big dogs waded through the snow 

 without difficulty, the small Alaska dogs struggled along bravely 

 and did their best, but the Eskimo dogs appeared bewildered and 

 floundered helplessly through the snow that came to their bellies. 



The day after we overtook Castel we were traveling east when 

 the weather cleared a little, and we saw the Leffingwell Crags 

 straight ahead and nothing but ice horizon and sky to the south. 

 Cape Murray was therefore on an island twenty or thirty miles in 

 diameter, separated from the larger one to the east by a strait 

 four or five miles wide. When we realized this we headed northeast 

 and were soon following northward the coast of the larger land. 



The weather was now particularly bad and for day after day it 

 was seldom that a hill six miles away could be seen, while more 

 often the visibility was six hundred yards and occasionally sixty. 

 When it was at all clear the two heavy sledges used to cross the 

 bays from point to point, while the light sled that was hauling me 

 went in towards the bottom of the bays and crossed the necks of 

 lowlands between them. In the evenings Castel and I compared 

 survey notes and were able to get a much better idea of the land 

 than if all of us had followed one course. We gradually realized 

 that we were in a big bay for we followed the land first west, then 

 southwest and south until we got around the end of the peninsula, 

 when on May 15th we found ourselves again on the west coast 

 going north. During this time we got little idea of the topography 

 inland but what we saw consisted of low, rolling hills. 



Continual fog and clouds with diffused light caused considerable 

 suffering to the eyes and consequent delay at this time. The loss 

 of most of our amber-colored and other snow glasses with the 

 Karluk might seem a lesser handicap, but as a matter of fact there 

 was scarcely any piece of equipment we so often longed for. Our 

 one good pair of goggles had to be used by the man who walked 

 ahead to pick trail. There were one or two inferior blue or green 

 pairs and the rest of us had to use eye protectors of the Eskimo 

 type, made of wood with a slit for each eye about big enough for 

 a silver half dollar. These cut down the light enough to protect 

 from snowblindness but they also limited the field of vision. If 

 you had your eyes on the horizon you could not see what was im- 

 mediately in front of you, for you had to look directly down towards 

 your toes to see where you were placing your feet. But this was 

 as bad as looking too far ahead, for it gave insufficient warning 

 of your approach to ice hummocks and other obstructions. Sit- 

 ting in the sled I needed no protection, for I could close my eyes 



