CHAPTER XIII 
WE BEGIN OUR SLEDGING 
On January seventeenth I decided that before 
long I would send a party of four men to the land 
to look out for game, see whether any driftwood 
was to be found on Wrangell Island, report on ice 
conditions and blaze a trail over the ice. This expe¬ 
dition would make an end to the men’s enforced 
inactivity and the natural uneasiness of some of 
them, which I was unwilling to prolong if I could 
avoid doing so, and would, besides, be valuable in 
determining our subsequent movements. I did 
not like to take the whole party to the island with¬ 
out previously transporting supplies that would be 
sure to last them for at least four months. 
Furthermore, the men had been living for a long 
time on shipboard and were not inured to the cold 
or yet in condition to withstand the privations they 
would have to undergo. None of them had had 
any experience in travelling over the Arctic ice dur¬ 
ing the brief and meagre light and in the low tem¬ 
peratures which would be our portion for another 
month, and the sledging of supplies towards the 
island would afford them the necessary practice. 
105 
