stefansson-wrangel-09-26-001-047

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to the west. Our progress was pretty slow, for in addition to
searching for the trail we had to chop a road through pressure
ridges frequently with the pickaxes. Our reason for trying to
follow the old trail was to see if we could find any of the
depots. When we arrived in a locality where we thought one of
the depots ought to be, we stopped for several hours or perhaps
over-night to make a search. I did not expect to find any of
them but we did find one which by good luck was in the middle of
an old ice floe that had escaped crushing.

The second morning out I shot a small bear, but the
rest of the boys would not eat it as they weren't hungry enough
yet, so I fed it to the dogs. This was better for them than
the pemmican ration.

The morning when we left camp the wind was fresh-
ening from the northeast. It gradually increased to a blizzard
and kept up for five or six days. In the morning of the sixth
day we arrived at the pressed-up ice where the edge of the land-
fast floe is constantly torn and ground by the moving pack. This
proved to he about forty miles north of Wrangell Island. The
ice was crushing and tumbling so that we just had to wait for it
to stop. I picked out what I thought was a good cake for camp-
ing. I then went to have a better look at the ridge and found
the ice in a frightful condition. I got on top of a small
pinnacle which was not moving just then and found the ridge ex-
tended about three and a half miles through such ice as I had
never before seen in my twenty-five years' knowledge of the
arctic sea. Nothing could he done till the crushing stopped.
I had grave fears for the Doctor's and the Mate's parties if they
got caught in this - fears which later [proved] only too well justified.