After returning to the tent, I strolled over the low gravel flat which forms Cape Aldrich, and gathered a few flowers. The purple flowers were nearly over, but the poppies were in full season; there were also the potentilla, which with their bright yellow flowers rising from the fine, deep-red runners or tentacles which radiate in every direction, form an even more striking bit of colour than the poppies. There was a great granite erratic on this point which I photographed.
After another sleep we resumed our march in a continuation of fine weather, and with the dogs feeling the effects of their rest and surfeit of meat. Following the snow-bank on the west side of the point to its extremity, and then straight out to the edge of the ice, we proceeded with considerable comfort, except for one large stream, draining Parr Bay and vicinity, which we had to ford.
The end of the march found us a little east of Gifford Peak. Two large streams were negotiated, one by fording, the other by a long detour round where it poured into a crack in the ice. The streams and lakes were much reduced in size to what they had been, and were steadily draining off.
The going was better than I anticipated. At this camp our supper and breakfast from the musk-ox meat, which had lain for some three weeks, was not over-attractive.
The next march again was in fine weather but the fog once more gained the ascendancy, and at the end of some five hours obliterated everything.
Watching intently for it, I at last made out faint traces of our trail of last spring from Pt. Moss northward, and pitching the tent a little beyond it, sent the two men in to the cache there with the sledge, to bring off some pemmican and biscuits. They missed their way in the fog, but eventually found the cache, and returned with the desired articles which were very acceptable. Three rivers were negotiated in this march.
The next march began in fog but ended in brilliant sunshine. In crossing Clements Markham inlet there were few lakes, the water taking the shape of the narrow but deep and widely ramifying pools of ordinary bay ice. Two considerable rivers we had to ford. We made the Cape Hecla land at the place where we left the ice-foot going out, but the ice-foot was a continuous deep lake now, and we continued on the sea ice to within about one-half mile of the Hecla camp, where open water forced us on to the crest of the ice-foot ridge, which was followed to the cache. The site of our spring camp was submerged now under several feet of water, the entire ice-foot here being a large lake. Taking a few things from the cache we kept along the crest until round into James Ross Bay, then camped on the ice, being unable to get ashore though close by it.
The next evening when we started, dense fog again covered everything, but as we had the rafter edge to follow, this did not interfere very much with our progress. At Crozier Island, I found some tins marking the site of our igloo in April 1902. Beyond here the fog lifted enough to show that the overland route across Fielden Peninsula was entirely impracticable owing to the absence of snow, and that we must go round by Joseph Henry. I rather dreaded this, for I knew what the conditions were on the east side of that savage cape.
Up to within about five miles of the point of the cape, the going was much the same as across Clements Markham Inlet, with two rivers that compelled detours. Then we had three or four miles of the heaviest going on raftered sea ice, then perhaps a mile of ice-foot. The apex of the cape was practically the same as in 1902. It required the three of us and all the dogs to each sledge to get along. As I looked back toward Hecla from the narrow ice-foot shelf at this apex, there came to me the time I first looked round it upon Hecla in April 1902, and my feelings at that time. I had been a far cry beyond since then. A short distance beyond the apex began an ice-foot lake. The tent and camp gear we backed around this along the steep slope of the talus, pitched the tent and made supper, then the men went back after more loads, then another trip for the sledges which were floated along. Another dog played out in this march and was killed.
A long and hard day. Several fossils were observed in the rocks and at the extremity of the cape, and one was secured.