434 FIELD WORK OF THE PEARY ARCTIC CLCTB, 1898-1902. 



obliged to halt just above Cape Cracroft and dig- a burrow in a snow- 

 drift. When the storm ceased 1 left him with another Eskimo and 9 

 of the poorest dogs and pushed on to reach Fort Conger. 



The moon had left us entirely now, and the ice foot was utterly 

 impracticable, and we groped and stumbled through the rugged sea 

 ice as far as Cape Baird. Here w^e slept a few hours in a burrow in 

 the snow, then started across Lady Franklin Bay. In complete dark- 

 ness and over a chaos of broken and heaved-up ice we stumbled and fell 

 and groped for eighteen hours, till we <'limbed upon the ice foot of the 

 north side. Here a dog was killed for food. Absence of suitable 

 snow put an igloo out of the question, and a semicave under a large 

 cake of ice was so cold that we could stop only long enough to make 

 tea. Here I left a broken sledge and 9 exhausted dogs. Just east of 

 us a iloe had been driven ashore, and forced up over the ice foot till 

 its shattered fragments lay 100 feet up the talus of the l)lutJ'. It 

 seemed impassable, but the crack at the edge of the ice foot allowed 

 us to squeeze through; and soon after we rounded the point, and I was 

 satisfied by the "'feeF' of the shore, for we could see nothing, that we 

 were at one of the entrances of Discover}'" Harbor, l>ut which one I 

 could not tell. Several hours of groping showed that it was the east- 

 ern entrance. We had struck the center of Bellot Island, and at mid- 

 night of January 6 we were stumbling through the dilapidated door of 

 Fort Conger. A little remaining oil enabled me, )\v the light of our 

 sledge cooker, to find the range and the stove in the officers' quarters, 

 and after some difficulty fires were started in ])oth. When this was 

 accomplished, a suspicious "wooden"'' feeling in my right foot led me 

 to have my kamiks pulled off, and I found to my annoj^ance that both 

 feet were frosted. Coffee from an open tin in the kitchen, and biscuit 

 from the tal)le in the men's room, just as they had been dropped over 

 fifteen years ago, furnished the menu for a simple but abundant lunch. 

 A hasty search failing to discover matches, candles, lamps, or oil, we 

 were forced to devise some kind of a light very quickly before our oil 

 burned out. Half a bottle of olive oil, a saucer, and a bit of towel 

 furnished the material for a small native lamp, and this, supplemented 

 by pork fat and lard, furnished us light for several days, until oil was 

 located. Throwing ourselves down on the cots in the officers' rooms, 

 after everything had been done for my feet, w^e slept long and soundly. 

 Awakening, it was evident that I should lose parts or all of several 

 toes, and be confined for some weeks. The mean minimum temperature 

 during the trip was —51.9'^ F., the lowest —63-^ F. 



During the following weeks our life at Conger was pronouncedly a 

 la Robinson Crusoe. Searching for things in the unbroken darkness 

 of the "Great Night," with a tiny flicker of flame in a saucer, was 

 very like seeking a needle in a haystack. Gradually all the essentials 

 were located, while my 2 faithful Eskimos brought in empty boxes 



