Tuesday, the 24th.—E. and W. went off about nine to cut a trail through the worst part of the bush by the Guyot Glacier, and the Indians to E for the last load of stores. H. and I stayed at home mending our boots and raiment, much plagued by the flies, of which there were many kinds, varying from a large house-fly to a microscopic grey beast, but all equally anxious to feed off us. About eleven I went towards the lake and succeeded in setting fire to a couple of dead trees, to serve as a signal to the men whom we were expecting from the beach. After this we lunched early off a few beans, and then H. set off with Billy and Jimmy to make a cache at the place where we left the bush for the Guyot Glacier. Directly afterwards E. and W. came back, and at the same moment we heard shouts across the lake. The men had returned. E. shouted to them to go round by the Guyot, and I rushed off and caught up H., who, after the cache had been made, set off to meet them, while the Indians and I returned slowly as it was very hot.
As the rest of us were having supper, a little after six, we suddenly saw a figure come in sight round the eastern corner of Castani. It was the energetic Gums, followed at intervals by the rest of our men, who had failed to understand our cries and had gone on by the Agassiz Glacier to our old camp at D. Gums, who had sworn he would never go that way again, kept his word in the letter if not in the spirit by cutting steps down the cliffs some three hundred yards short of the slope opposite camp, down which the others came as they had done before. The mystery of their footprints was then explained. When they reached the lake its bed was quite dry, and they went right across it to the western side, where they were able to get on to the ice, and, the Guyot Glacier proving much easier than the Agassiz, they reached B without difficulty the first day. The next day they reached the shore, going down by the river recommended by Seton-Karr, which we had advised them to try. They took a day’s rest, returned in one day to B, and made their camp next night at the spot where the river issued from the ice. Leaving this at 4.30 A.M., they had nearly got to Castani by nine o’clock, when Gums, who was on ahead, reported that the lake was too high to cross, and they turned towards the old route on the Agassiz, finding very bad going.
While thus engaged they saw the smoke from the fire I had lit, and Gums then said he could get round by the Guyot, but as he had previously denied the existence of such a way the men declined to try it, and, after hailing us without understanding what we said in reply, went on to D and so round. They were all in good health, but George, the only one who had no boots, was very footsore. H. came in about half-an-hour later, somewhat annoyed by his wild-goose-chase, splashed with glacier-mud, and hoarse with shouting after the lost caravan; but he was too hungry to waste time in grumbling, and after supper we turned in early. At this camp, in consequence of E.’s snoring, which had become perfectly maddening, packed like sardines as we were, I turned round and slept with my head where my feet used to be. W. occasionally did a little snoring in a mild way, but was nothing to E., who not only snored his breath in, but blew it out again with a puff like a locomotive. Sleeping with his head under the blankets because of mosquitoes, increased the evil, and it was no good my poking or kicking him, for he always went to sleep again long before I did.
Wednesday, the 25th.—After the fatigues of the previous day the men slept late. Gums went to fetch some of the Indians’ blankets, &c., left at D. At nine o’clock E. and nearly all the men got under way, followed shortly by H. and W., while an hour later I brought on Mike, George, and Gums, who went very slowly and did not reach the edge of the glacier till twelve. Here I had a row with Gums, who had apparently got out of bed wrong leg foremost, and maintained that his load was too heavy, threatening, in order to lighten it, to throw away the frying-pans and kettles. As he had been ahead of us most of the time, so that I had had to call him back more than once, and was, besides, much the strongest of the three Indians with me, this was absurd, and I nearly lost my temper with him, a fatal thing when dealing with the natives; but, curbing my righteous indignation, I merely remarked, ‘Halo kettle, halo muck-a-muck,’ i.e., ‘No kettles, no supper,’ and, leaving him to digest that information and a ship’s biscuit to soften it down, I went on after the others, who were vanishing over the glacier. For this my conscience rather reproached me afterwards, for, without amounting to an ice-fall, there were some rather ugly crevasses a little way on, in which laden men might conceivably have come to grief, but they turned up all right. I had caught up most of those ahead, and had relieved W. of the camera which he was carrying, when we heard shouts from E. and Shorty at the edge of the glacier.
With the exception of H., who was on ahead up the glacier and took no part in the struggle that ensued, we hurried on and found that, as they got on to the hill-side, they had espied a small flock of geese on a pool between the glacier and the land. Shorty fired his pistol at them, on which, instead of flying away, they swam into a cave under the ice, and he ran down and blockaded them while E. shouted for us. We went down to the water, and with some difficulty reached the mouth of the cave on pieces of ice that were more or less afloat. To get there we had to pass under a slender ice-arch that seemed to be on the point of falling, but once on the ice-blocks we were quite safe. Accordingly Shorty, W., and I commenced firing, whilst the others guarded the exit as best they could, and a wild scene ensued. E. in his excitement slipped into the water, where he grabbed no less than three geese, but was only able to secure one, with which he retired to shore terribly numbed. Meanwhile a good many had got out of the cave, but, to our delight, they could not fly, the old ones being in moult at the time and the young ones being still flappers, so that, after much stone-throwing, firing, and occasional use of ice-axes, we found ourselves in possession of ten geese. Two, I believe, escaped under the ice, one badly wounded.
We then pushed on after H., bearing our spoils with us, and camped about four o’clock in a most lovely spot at the west end of the Chaix Hills. Just at our back was a little lake about two hundred yards long, in which we used to bathe, and in front of us rose our mountain, partly concealed by a group of fir-trees to our right, the last timber that we met with, though I saw three dead trunks on the other side of the Tyndall Glacier. We made a tremendous supper off stewed goose and apple-sauce, and afterwards decided to cross the glacier next morning to the site of Schwatka’s last camp, where, though there was no timber, we could see that there was plenty of scrub, probably alder, like that surrounding us. There was a most lovely sunset, but directly afterwards it got very cold, and we rapidly sought our blankets.