The next day dawned fine and clear. We got out of our igloo before sunrise, when the horizon was bright and objects along the surface of the ice were sharply defined against the sky-line; sunrise and sunset are the best times to see anything at a distance. A good night’s sleep had rested my eyes and when I looked through my binoculars from the top of the ridge I could see the land distinctly, covered with snow. I was surprised to be able to see it so clearly. I called to Kataktovick to come up.
“Me see him, me see him noona (land),” he said; he had been up on the rafter, he added, before I had got out of the igloo.
“What you think him?” I asked. “You think him all right?”
“Might be, might be, perhaps,” he replied.
Evidently he was still dubious about its being Siberia. He had been satisfied by the chart the night before; at Shipwreck Camp and again at Wrangell Island I had explained the charts to him, had shown him where we were going, what we were going to do with the charts, how far away Siberia was and how far we should have to travel to meet Eskimo, expressing the distances by comparing them with the distance from Point Barrow to the deer camp, for instance, or down to Cape Lisburne, trips that were familiar to him. Now, however, he still appeared skeptical of the identity of the land we were looking at. He said it was not Siberia. When I asked why, he replied that he had been told by his people that Siberia was low land. I explained to him that the shore was, it was true, low in many places, running out for miles into the sea. This low fore-shore was known as the tundra; owing to the distance we could see only the hinterland behind it, which was high. Kataktovick listened to my explanation and then shook his head. It might be an island, he said; Alaskan Eskimo on the Siberian shore, so he had been told, are always set upon and killed by the Eskimo there. I told him as best I could that the Siberian Eskimo were just as kindly disposed towards wayfarers as the Alaskan Eskimo and that he had nothing to fear. I think he still rather hoped that the land we saw was not Siberia but a new island, so that he might postpone as long as possible the horrible fate he was convinced was in store for him.
From the time we started that morning we had leads of water and treacherous young ice to contend with. In some places we could get across easily; in others we had to make wide detours. At noon we stopped on the north side of a narrow lead and Kataktovick made a little snow igloo to serve as shelter while we rested for awhile. He understood perfectly how to use the Primus stove and he made some tea. While he was doing this I reconnoitered to the eastward, walking probably two miles before I came to a point where we could cross. When I returned to the sledge the Eskimo had the tea ready and we found it most refreshing. We could always eat bear meat whenever we were hungry. It got frozen on the sledge, of course, but with a knife or a hatchet we would chip off small pieces, or sometimes we would thaw it out by rolling it up in our shirts and letting our bodily heat melt the frost.
We now went on to the eastward to the point I had selected for crossing the lead. There was young ice here but it was not very strong, so we had to adopt our customary expedient of pulling the sledge over and back lightly loaded. Once across we went on for some time without trouble with open water but presently found ourselves among heavy raftered ice, with high pinnacles and in between them masses of snow, deep and not very hard. We had to use the pickaxe a good deal and the dogs had hard going. Three of them were getting to be very sick.
Towards the end of the day we could see the land distinctly, about forty miles away. When we built our igloo at dark we had made at least ten miles to the good, though our actual march had been longer than that. The Eskimo appeared very much depressed. I was naturally feeling cheerful myself because in two or three days we should be on land. Furthermore I believed most of our troubles with open leads would soon be over, as we approached nearer the shore ice, though the going would probably be rough from the pressure of the running-ice on the still ice, just as we had found it in getting away from Wrangell Island.
During the latter part of our day’s journey I fell and hurt my side. My eyes troubled me more than ever, because I broke the glass in my goggles and, though I had another pair, I did not find that they suited me as well as those to which I had become accustomed. Kataktovick, too, wore goggles.
On April 1 we made a good day’s march. The going was rather rough, but we were fortunate in finding the young ice firm enough to bear us so that we did not lose much time in getting across the leads to the big floes where it was smoother and more level. About three o’clock in the afternoon we came to a belt of raftered ice and deep, soft snow, where we had to use the pickaxe. After two hours’ work we got through and had good going the remainder of the day.