The two following marches were made in a thick fog, through which we groped our way northward, over broken ice and across gigantic, wavelike drifts of hard snow. One more march in clear weather over frightful going—consisting of fragments of old floes; ridges of heavy ice thrown up to heights of twenty-five to fifty feet; crevasses and holes, masked by snow; the whole intersected by narrow leads of open water—brought us at 5 A. M. on the 16th of May to the northern edge of a fragment of an old floe bounded by water. A reconnoissance from the summit of a pinnacle of the floe, some fifty feet high, showed that we were on the edge of the disintegrated pack, with a dense water sky not far distant.
My hours for sleep at this camp were occupied in observations, and making a transit profile of the northern coast from Cape Washington eastward.
The next day I started back for the land, reached it in one long march and camped.
Within a mile of our next camp a herd of fifteen musk-oxen lay fast asleep; I left them undisturbed. From here on, for three marches, we made great distances over good going, in blinding sunshine, and in the face of a wind from the east which burned our faces like a sirocco.
The first march took us to a magnificent cape (Cape Bridgman), at which the northern face of the land trends away to the southeast. This cape is in the same latitude as Cape Washington. The next two carried us down the east coast to the 83d parallel. In the first of these we crossed the mouth of a large fiord penetrating for a long distance in a southwesterly (true) direction. On the next, in a fleeting glimpse through the fog, I saw a magnificent mountain of peculiar contour, which I recognised as the peak seen by me in 1895, from the summit of the interior ice-cap south of Independence Bay, rising proudly above the land to the north. This mountain was then named by me Mt. Wistar. Finally the density of the fog compelled a halt on the extremity of a low point, composed entirely of fine glacial drift, and which I judged to be a small island in the mouth of a large fiord.
From my camp of the previous night I had observed this island (?) and beyond and over it a massive block of a mountain, forming the opposite cape of a large intervening fiord, and beyond that again another distant cape. Open water was clearly visible a few miles off the coast, while not far out dark water clouds reached away to the southeast.
At this camp I remained two nights and a day, waiting for the fog to lift. Then, as there seemed to be no indication of its doing so, and my provisions were exhausted, I started on my return journey at 3:30 A. M. on the 22d of May, after erecting a cairn, in which I deposited the following record:
COPY OF RECORD IN CAIRN AT CLARENCE WYCKOFF ISLAND
Arrived here at 10:30 P. M., May 20th, from Etah via Fort Conger, and north end of Greenland. Left Etah March 4th. Left Conger April 15th. Arrived north end of Greenland May 13th. Reached point on sea ice latitude 83° 50′ N., May 16th.
On arrival here had rations for one more march southward. Two days dense fog have held me here. Am now starting back.