One dog played out and dragged into camp behind the sledge, three others next door to it.
We are now abreast of what looks as if it might be a musk-ox country and I must go in and reconnoitre it as soon as we have had some sleep and the weather permits. I cannot give the dogs more than the allowance of pemmican, and that is not enough for them in this heavy going.
The first half of the march was clear, following a brilliant day in camp, then clouds and fog gathered with a wind directly in our faces, and the latter part of the march was decidedly bleak and cold, in striking contrast to the previous one, when I travelled comfortably in my blanket shirt.
Almost by the time the tent was pitched, it was snowing, and is now snowing and blowing heavily from the southwest (true).
The course to-day has been for the most distant cape, and using this line as a long base, I have fixed points of the coast by intersections.
It is rather aggravating that the day on which I begin my running survey, should be worse than previous ones, but that is the Arctic way.
In to-day’s march we passed the mouth of a black precipitous-walled bay, some eight to ten miles wide at its mouth, with apparently several interior ramifications. Mine!
CHAPTER X
WESTWARD OVER THE GLACIAL FRINGE OF GRANT LAND (CONTINUED)
It blew and snowed all day of the 18th, and for several hours of the 19th. Then the snow ceased, but the wind continued with increased force, keeping up a blinding cloud of drift.
We broke camp, leaving all but two days’ rations, and our tent and gear, and went in to the land about six miles distant. The march, short as it was, was as disagreeable as I had experienced for a long time, the bitter wind finding every opening in our clothing and filling it with snow, which then melted, so that when we reached the land, we were all thoroughly wet. Close to the land we got out of the drift, but did not escape the wind.