THE BIG LEAD 
to keep on to the alcohol cache at Cape Colum- 
bia, turn back and meet us here, or, if the ice 
freezes, to follow us until he catches up with 
us. We are husbanding our fuel, and two 
meals a day is our programme. We are still 
south of the Big Lead of 1906, but to all in- 
tents and purposes this is it. I am able to 
recognize many of the characteristics of it, and 
I feel sure it is the same old lead that gave us 
many an anxious hour in our upward and 
downward journey three years ago. 
Fine weather, but we are still south of the 
84th parallel and this open water marks it. 
8° below zero and all comfortable. We 
should be doing twenty or twenty-five miles 
a day good traveling, but we are halted by this 
open water. 
March 7: Professor MacMillan came into 
camp to-day with the cache he had picked up. 
There was quite a hullabaloo among the boys, 
and a great deal of argument as to who owned 
various articles of provender and equipment 
that had been brought into camp by MacMil- 
lan, and even I was on the point of jimiping 
into the fracas in order to see fair play, until 
a wink from MacMillan told me that it was 
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