stefansson-wrangel-09-31-042v

50

THE ADVENTURE OF WRANGEL ISLAND

so we could use wood for fuel. They weighed only a few
pounds. The Captain did not approve of this, however,
for he had never been in those parts of the Arctic where
driftwood is available for fuel, and gave us orders to
burn kerosene instead. We started with a light load
and were to replenish as we went along from the above-
mentioned depots which had been made at the Captain’s
orders at various intervals towards land. I should judge
we had nine hundred pounds to each sled and five dogs.
We had one Mannlicher rifle for each sled and three
hundred rounds of ammunition for each rifle. We also
had one .22 calibre rifle with five hundred rounds.

About nine o’clock February 12th, the chief engineer’s
party started from Shipwreck Camp towards shore with
me in it. We tried to follow the old trail made by the
sledges when they were carrying out the supplies which
had been cached in the several depots at varying dis-
tances from Shipwreck Camp along a line running
towards shore. We found the trail broken by ice move-
ment and difficult or impossible to follow. In some places
we would come to where the trail ended abruptly along
a line of ice movement and after long search we might
find it two or three miles to one side or the other. Usually
it was found to the left, for the farther away from
Wrangel Island the ice was, the faster it was drifting
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 overnight to make
a search. I did not expect to find any of them, but we