We left the camp off Challenger Point at ten at night and headed straight for the point of Cape Columbia, studying the shore very carefully with the glasses. At last our dark object of the day before was located again, a musk-ox feeding on a little plateau, and I went away at once with Koolootingwah and two dogs and secured the animal with one shot, after taking a number of photos at short range.
From the elevation where he was, open water could be seen extending all along the edge of the ice-foot. The swells which we traversed coming from Point Moss, showed up beautifully from here as parallel swells following the main contour of the shore. When the two men came up with the sledges I found that they had utilised their time while waiting, in locating four more musk-oxen farther inland.
Examined from our elevation with the glass, we saw that there were six. We went away after these, and I secured five (one bull, two cows, one two-year-old heifer, and a two-year-old bull) with five shots. One bull had separated from the rest before we arrived, and I did not go after him.
These cows had whiter backs than the bulls, and a pronounced white spot between the horns. We skinned the animals, cut them up, fed the dogs on the refuse, and brought the meat and skins out to where I had killed the single bull. Then we had a grand feed. Numerous hare, sandpipers, snow-buntings, and bluebottle flies, also several caterpillars were seen here. We camped on the bare dry gravel near the musk-ox and found it a great relief from the blinding glare of the ice. Plenty of water nearby.
Again I quote from my Journal:
Cape Nares, June 8th.—To-day has seen the accomplishment of what I planned last fall, almost as soon as the Roosevelt reached Cape Sheridan: the building of a cairn, the display of the Stars and Stripes and the placing of my record and a piece of the flag, on the summit of Cape Columbia, the northern extremity of North America.
Caching the meat and getting the musk-ox skins stretched to dry in the sun took some time, and we did not get under way till 10:30 P. M. of the 7th, the fine weather continuing, though a fresh breeze from the west, heavy clouds over the land to the southwest and a bank of clouds to the north threatened a change.
At 12:30 this morning, I stopped the sledges at the foot of the northern twin peak of Columbia, and began the ascent with two Eskimos, leaving one to look after the dogs.
The peak is a steep conical pile of loose stones, and though only 1,800 feet high, it took us two hours to make the ascent. I am very much below par, even more than I thought, no wind and no strength. Obliged to stop every little way and rest. Arrived at the top we built a cairn about five feet high and four to five feet in diameter, with an ash pole in the centre, hoisted my flag, took some photos, placed a record and piece of the flag in a tin inside the cairn, then made the descent down a steep snow-bank, plunging rapidly and making fast time, though at the expense of my stumps.
The weather was now growing more threatening, and two or three times banks of fog had momentarily enveloped us.