Pressing on after the return of the supporting sledges, Mylius-Erichsen was surprised and disappointed to find that the coast continued to trend to the northeast, and not to the northwest, as indicated by all charts since Peary crossed the inland ice to Navy Cliff. This northeasterly trend greatly increased the length of the journey needful to complete the survey of the entire east coast. Their equipment had been planned for the shorter distance, and it was evident that this forced détour would soon leave them without food for themselves or for their dogs unless more game should be found.
They thought that this extension would never end, but it was finally reached at Cape Northeast, 82° 30′ N., 12° W., no less than 22° of longitude to the eastward of Peary's location of the Greenland Sea in his discoveries of 1892 and 1895. The new cape was half-way between Navy Cliff and Spitzbergen, thus narrowing by one-half the largest connecting waterway of the Arctic and the Atlantic Oceans. It was a magnificent discovery, for which some of these explorers were to pay with their lives.
Mylius-Erichsen and Koch counselled seriously together, and well they might. They had been on the march more than a month; coming summer, with a disintegrating ice-pack, and the dreaded Mallemuk mountain precipices, sea-washed at their base, were to be faced on their homeward journey; and to crown all they had provisions for only fourteen days.
Imbued with the high Danish spirit, they duly weighed, with national calmness, the pros and the cons, only asking each other how and what, with their pitiful means, they could further do for the glory of Denmark. The heroic loyalty of both men found full expression in the decision that it was their bounden duty to go forward, and to finish the survey with which they were charged, regardless of possible dangers and personal privations. So Koch marched northward, while Mylius-Erichsen turned westward toward Navy Cliff, nearly two hundred miles distant. The westward explorations had been made much more important by the unexpected easterly extension of Greenland, which left a great gap in its northern shore-line that must at all hazards be surveyed. Starting with Topographer Hagen and the Greenlander dog driver, Brönlund, Erichsen reached a great inland fiord (Denmark), which he naturally took for the one charted by Peary as bordering the Greenland Sea. Though this détour carried him a hundred miles out of the direct route to Cape Riksdag, it was not wholly without results. Twenty-one musk-oxen were killed, which restored the strength of the dogs, whose gaunt frames already alarmed the party.
Here with astonishment they saw signs not alone of the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air, but everywhere were indications of their master—man himself. As they skirted such scanty bits of land as the inland ice had spared, they found along every bay or inlet proofs of former human life. There were huts and household utensils,—left as though suddenly,—circles of summer tents, fragments of kayaks and sledges, stone meat-caches, fox-traps, and implements of land hunt and sea chase, in which both reindeer and whales were in question. They were mighty hunters, these children of the ice, men of iron who inhabited the most northern lands of the earth, and had there lived where these white voyagers of heroic mould were destined to perish.
The signs of human life continued beyond Denmark Fiord to the very shores of Hagen Fiord, thus clearly establishing the route of migration over which the Eskimo of Arctic America or of the Bering Strait region had reached the east coast, and possibly West Greenland, coming from the north.[27]
The turning-point of Erichsen's fortunes came at Cape Riksdag, where he met Koch's party returning from the north. His discoveries and surveys of southeastern Hazen Land (Peary), where he reached 83° 30′ N., and his tales of game, encouraged Mylius-Erichsen to go on, though he had food for eight days only for the men, eleven for the dogs, and a few quarts of oil for cooking.
Another fiord (Hagen) was discovered, which proved fatal to the party, as Mylius-Erichsen felt that Navy Cliff, reported as overlooking the Greenland Sea, must surely be therein. He turned north on learning his error, only to eat his last food on June 4. He felt obliged to cover his mistake by going still to the west to Cape Glacier (Navy Cliff) yet 9° of longitude inland. Peary had there escaped starvation by large game, and Erichsen went forward knowing that without game death awaited him. Now and then they shot a polar hare, a bare mouthful for three starving men and twenty-three ravenous dogs. June 14, 1907, Mylius-Erichsen connected his surveys with Navy Cliff.[28] He had a right to a feeling of pride and of exultation, for his magnificent series of discoveries, covering 5° of latitude and 22° of longitude, completed the survey of northeastern Greenland. Thus had these adventurous men given tangible form to the hopes and aspirations that for so many years had stirred the imagination of Danish explorers. These discoveries had involved outward sledge journeys of more than seven hundred miles, although the party was only outfitted for a distance of three hundred and thirty miles.
Lieutenant Trolle tells us how startlingly sudden was the change from winter to summer at the Danmark, Cape Bismarck. "The temperature of the snow had risen to zero (32° Fahrenheit), and then in one day it all melted. The rivers were rushing along, flowers budding forth, and butterflies fluttering in the air. One day only the ptarmigan and raven, the next the sanderling, the ringed plover, geese, ducks, and others."
Mylius-Erichsen and his comrade had a similar experience just as they turned homeward. Almost in a day the snow-covering of the sea-floe vanished, as if by miracle. Here and there water-holes appeared—the dreadful fact was clear, the ice-floes were breaking up. Forced now to the coast-land, it was plain that return to their ship was no longer possible. They must summer in a barren, ice-capped land, and wait, if they could live so long, until the frosts of early autumn should re-form the great white highway of arctic travel.