IN SEARCH OF OUR OWN EXPEDITION 179 



succeeded in borrowing four but it turned out that none 

 of them was worth his feed. They were small and also 

 poor in flesh. One was larger than the others and looked 

 better but he turned out to have fits resembling epilepsy 

 with which he was seized two or three times a day. He 

 used to foam at the mouth, lying in a fit for a few min- 

 utes, after which he got up but was dizzy and apparently 

 out of his head for an hour or so. After two or three 

 hours of normal pulling he would have another fit. 



This spring journey gave me several new experiences. 

 One of these was with "diffused light," which is among 

 the chief annoyances of arctic travel. This trouble comes 

 when the sky is uniformly clouded over and the clouds 

 just thick enough so that they let through most of the 

 sun's light without revealing just where the sun is. If 

 the position of the sun in the sky is even faintly visible, 

 then the case is not so bad, for discernible shadows will 

 then appear in the lee of snowdrifts, ice snags, etc. But 

 when you cannot see the sun there are no shadows. The 

 snowdrifts are white and the ice snags white and there is 

 nothing to enable you to distinguish between them. 



The storms of winter sculpture the snow into ridges 

 which we call drifts. If you have not seen snowdrifts, 

 just imagine that the surface of an ocean or a big lake 

 is first ruffled by a moderate storm and then suddenly 

 frozen solid so that every wave and billow retains its 

 position as they do on a painted canvas. Traveling over 

 such a snow surface is disagreeable enough when the sun 

 is shining and gives you shadows enough in the low places 

 so that you can distinguish a ridge from a trough. But 

 under the conditions of "diffused light" the snow before 

 you, no matter how rough in reality, looks perfectly 

 smooth. And still that is hardly the word. It rather 



