Soon after camping it began to clear, and during the day while we slept, the sun shone bright and warm though the land was covered with clouds and fog, and only the nearer portions visible.
After this we had a fine travelling night, clear, cool and calm, and came on to “Rainbow Hill,” Cape Alexandra, in eight hours. The new light snow made fine snowshoeing, but was very heavy for the dogs and sledges; and this heaviness was accentuated in the series of rolling swells which are a feature of this peculiar ice-foot (?) along here. These swells are on a large scale, and reminded me very strongly of portions of the ice-cap of Greenland. If they are not huge drifts, I do not know how to account for them. Off Ward Hunt Island and especially the western end, they are particularly marked, and here they blend into drifts formed in the lee of the island.
We camped at Cape Alexandra on a patch of bare, dry gravel near what seemed to be the site of a river.
As the tent was set up, two brant flew over. A fine supper here of musk-ox steak, bacon, tea and biscuits, after which I sent two men up the valley to look for musk-ox, deer and hare. During this march a man without snowshoes would go in about knee deep.
My two men returned before noon with three hare, all small and with very long ears. It occurred to me this might be a new species or variety. The head of one was turning brown. One female contained five young, ready for delivery.
My men saw twelve hare in all. They also saw the tracks of a large bull musk-ox, made before the recent snowfall, going east, and the antlers of a deer.
A fine, warm, sunny day enabled us to dry out our clothing and gear, all wet from the recent snowfall.
Up to this time, I had not encroached upon the store of pemmican with which I left Point Moss, the captain’s small cache of four cans just making the one feed which I gave the dogs off Challenger Point, and the rest of their feeds having been from the Columbia musk-ox. When we turned out at Cape Alexandra we had rabbit stew for breakfast.
From Cape Alexandra we went on in eight and one-quarter hours, to McClintock Bay, the going heavy through the recently fallen snow, and everyone wearing snowshoes as usual. We attempted to cut across over the foreshore from Cape Alexandra to Cape Discovery, but found the grade too heavy, and the snow still deeper; and as I did not feel like breaking the trail ahead on snowshoes, we descended again, and went round it. We camped about in the middle of McClintock Bay, which looked very little as it appears on the chart. The eastern arm is a large deep inlet, running in about west to south (magnetic), and the middle western arm bends more to the west than shown.
Cape Discovery is a bold mass, with a small glacier between the two arms of the bay, and there is apparently a large glacier ahead, for the point of which we are travelling. This entire bay with its ramifications is a black-walled indentation, its shores nearly continuous cliffs, except at the head of the middle arm, and apparently at the head of the eastern arm.