230 MY ARCTIC JOURNAL 



over the crest of the great white mass and looked down and 

 forward upon our course, there, some two miles away, upon 

 the slope of the next dome, were two or three dark, irregular 

 objects. Even as I looked at them they moved and separated, 

 until I could count several detached bodies. They could be 

 but one thing — men; and as there were so many of them, 

 and as I was sure that none of the Eskimos could have been 

 persuaded by my boys to set foot upon the inland ice, I knew 

 in an instant that some ship was lying in the bay waiting for 

 us. It was but a little while later, both parties descending 

 rapidly toward each other, that we met in the depression be- 

 tween the two domes, and I grasped again the hand of Pro- 

 fessor Heilprin, who had been the last to say good-by to me 

 a year before, as I lay a cripple in my tent, and who now had 

 come again to meet me and bring us back. It was a strange 

 and never-to-be-forgotten meeting. In the ship lying at 

 anchor at the very head of the bay I found the woman who 

 had been waiting for me for three months, and two days later 

 we were back again in the little house which had sheltered us 

 through a year of Arctic vicissitudes. 



Such, in brief, is the outline of the inland-ice journey from 

 McCormick Bay to the northern shore of Greenland and back. 

 Its important results are already well known, and it is not 

 necessary to revert to them here. I will attempt, however, to 

 give some adequate impression of the unique surroundings in 

 which our work was done, and also to make clear the real 

 character of this great interior ice-plateau, a natural feature so 



