4 THREE WEEKS IN HUBBARD BA Y 



earl}'' Norsemen. To collect such remains was my main object. 

 As Lieut. Ryder sent a collection to the 'Ethnographic Museum 

 at Copenhagen, I feared that nothing of note would be left at the 

 sites he had touched, and therefore asked Mr Peary to land me 

 at Cape Malm, the north end of Hubbard bay. 



With three Eskimos from Upernivik, I was landed on August 

 10 on a headland supposed to be Cape Malm, the dense fog pre- 

 venting accurate orientation. From the top I perceived next 

 morning that I was on the island next south (which I have called 

 Hoyt island), separated from Cape Malm by a channel five miles 

 wide, filled with icebergs. As soon as the fog had lifted I pre- 

 pared to row over to Cape Malm, but when we reached the west 

 end of Hoyt island and saw before us the wild chaos of rapidly 

 moving icebergs, the Eskimos, thoroughly frightened, refused to 

 row farther, even for triple pay. Lieut. Peary had urged me to 

 listen to the Eskimos 1 advice in regard to ice and wind, and I 

 recognized that under no circumstances must I fail to keep my 

 appointment to meet him on September 1, because such failure 

 would subject him to the inconvenience of having to search for 

 me in those unknown and ill-reputed waters of Melville bay. 

 Accordingly, after ten minutes' parley, finding that their appre- 

 hensions were real, I turned back. 



I now decided to make a thorough exploration of Hoyt island 

 as the type of a group. The island consists of four mountain 

 masses, the highest about 1,000 feet, separated by deep valleys. 

 Except on the storm-beaten western peninsula, which seemed 

 entirely bare, the southern slopes, where not too near the per- 

 pendicular or too smoothly glaciated, are covered with the ordi- 

 nary Arctic vegetation, blueberries, crowberries, grasses, heather, 

 poppy, dwarf willow, dwarf birch, and an abundance of moss, 

 forming carpets into which the foot sank up to the ankle. Every- 

 where the sod was sliding down in great, black, wavy avalanches, 

 held together by the tough, peaty fiber, so that plants were often 

 seen growing from vertical or even overhanging surfaces. The 

 summits and the north flank, a succession of nearly vertical 

 cliffs, are almost entirely bare of vegetation. In the shadow of 

 many cliffs lay long snow banks (aput), hard as ice, offering con- 

 siderable resistance to the knife, yet evidently not of many years' 

 growth, since a hollow space beneath them bore witness to active 

 melting. The tinkle of little streams could be heard in many 

 places, but only at one point was there a watercourse sufficiently 

 definite to be called a brook. The summits and sides, where not 



