was now almost overhead.

Pushing on, we soon reached the captain's camp. There I found the
familiar unwelcome sight which I had so often before me on the
expedition of 1905-06--the white expanse of ice cut by a river of inky
black water, throwing off dense clouds of vapor which gathered in a
sullen canopy overhead, at times swinging lower with the wind and
obscuring the opposite shore of this malevolent Styx.

The lead had opened directly through the heavy floes, and, considering
that these floes are sometimes one hundred feet in thickness, and of
almost unimaginable weight, the force that could open such a river
through them is comparable with the forces that threw up the mountains
on the continents and opened the channels between the lands.

Bartlett told me that during the previous night in the camp a mile
farther south where I had found his note, the noise caused by the
opening of this great lead had awakened him from sleep. The open water
was now about a quarter of a mile in width, and extended east and west
as far as we could see when we climbed to the highest pinnacle of ice in
the neighborhood of our camp.

Two or three miles to the east of us, as we could see by the vapor
hanging over it, the north and south lead which had paralleled our last
two marches intersected the course of the lead beside which we were
encamped.

Though farther south than where we had encountered the "Big Lead" in
1906, north of Cape Hecla, this one had every resemblance to that great
river of open water which on the way up we had called "the Hudson," and
on our way back--when it seemed that those black waters had cut us off
forever from the land--we had renamed "the Styx." The resemblance was so
strong that even the Eskimos who had been with me on the expedition
three years before spoke about it.

I was glad to see that there was no lateral movement in the ice; that
is, that the two shores of the lead were not moving east or west, or in
opposite directions. The lead was simply an opening in the ice under the
pressure of the wind and the spring tides, which were now swelling to
the full moon on the 6th.

Captain Bartlett, with his usual thoughtfulness, had an igloo already
built for me near his own when I arrived. While the other three
divisions were building their igloos the captain took a sounding, and
obtained a depth of one hundred and ten fathoms. We were now about
forty-five miles north of Cape Columbia.

The next day, M