24 VOYAGE TO THE POLAR SEA. MAT 



distance along the floe of yesterday, we began to round 

 the low land in the direction of the cape, which we 

 saw now and then. We soon arrived on some deeply- 

 scored and hard sastrugi, on which we found it impos- 

 sible to make certain of our footing, and the way we 

 all fell and tumbled about would have been ludicrous 

 had it not been so tiresome. This work was not at all 

 good for the " game legs," as the men call them ; the 

 Sergeant, Good, and Doidge suffered especially. We 

 reached Cape Fanshawe Martin about four hours after 

 starting, 



' A perpendicular wall of ice, between fifteen and 

 twenty feet high, and some seventy yards in length, 

 occupies the dip between the land rising to the cape 

 and the shelving land round which we had travelled. 

 This looks like the .face of a miniature glacier, and 

 is situated about thirty or forty yards from the floe. 

 Fog prevented our seeing anything but the wall 

 itself. 



' After rounding Cape Fanshawe Martin we crossed 

 the tail of a low spit, which extends about a mile to 

 the northward, and followed the trend of the coast, 

 which from here was about south-west (true). Halted 

 for lunch at 8.20 A.M., and pitched the tent. 



' I picked up the leaf of a willow to-day, which 

 shows there must be bare places somewhere ; but the 

 snow-drifts in this neighbourhood are tremendous. 



'Though the line of hummocks is somewhat closer 

 in, there appears to be a great similarity in the condi- 

 tion and quality of the ice here and off Cape Columbia. 

 Between the two capes is a distance of nearly eighty 

 miles, and about midway between the two lies Ward 



