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we could not do anything for him there. The Doctor's party was
never seen or heard of again, nor any trace of them found.

That evening the Captain informed me that on the
12th of the month I would leave with the two engineer, Munro and Williamson, the two firemen, Buddy and Maurer,
and Malloch, Chafe and one sailor. We would have two sleds and would
go to Wrangell Island. The chief engineer John Munro, was in command of our party.

The next day we got everything ready. We had a lot
of collapsible iron stoves for burning driftwood and I wanted to
take two of them along to Wrangell 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 these parts of the Arctic where driftwood is available for fuel, and gave us orders to burn heroine instead. of driftwood.
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 Mann-
lieher rifle for each sled and three hundred rounds of ammunition
for each rifle. We also had one .22 caliber fifle 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 distances, from Shipwreck Camp along a line running
towards shore. We found the trail broken by ice movement 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 Wrangell Island the ice was, the faster it was drifting