open water to the west, from
which direction the wind came. During this march we crossed several
leads covered with young ice, treacherous under the recently fallen
snow. Along the course of one of these leads we saw the fresh track of a
polar bear going west, over two hundred miles from land.

[Illustration: REPAIRING SLEDGES IN CAMP]

At half-past ten on the morning of the 25th I came upon Bartlett and
Henson with their men, all in camp, in accordance with my instructions
to wait for me at the end of their fifth march. I turned them all out,
and every one jumped in to repair the sledges, redistribute the loads,
weed out the least efficient dogs, and rearrange the Eskimos in the
remaining divisions.

While this work was going on, Marvin, favored by clear weather, took
another meridian observation for latitude and obtained 86 deg. 38'. This
placed us, as I expected, beyond the Italian record, and showed that in
our last three marches we had covered a distance of fifty minutes of
latitude, an average of sixteen and two-thirds miles per march. We were
thirty-two days ahead of the Italian record in time.

I was doubly glad of the result of the observations, not only for the
sake of Marvin, whose services had been invaluable and who deserved the
privilege of claiming a higher northing than Nansen and Abruzzi, but
also for the honor of Cornell University, to the faculty of which he
belonged, and two of whose alumni and patrons had been generous
contributors to the Peary Arctic Club. I had hoped that Marvin would be
able to make a sounding at his farthest north, but there was no young
ice near the camp through which a hole could be made.

[Illustration: A MOMENTARY HALT IN THE LEE OF A BIG HUMMOCK NORTH OF
88 deg.]

About four o'clock in the afternoon Bartlett, with Ooqueah and Karko,
two sledges, and eighteen dogs, got away for the advance. Bartlett
started off with the determination to bag the 88th parallel in the next
five marches (after which he was to turn back), and I sincerely hoped
that he would be able to reel off the miles to that point, as he
certainly deserved such a record.

Later I learned that he had intended to cover twenty-five or thirty
miles in his first march, which he would have done had conditions not
been against him. Though tired with the long march and the day's work in
camp, after a short sleep the night before, I was not able to turn in
for several hours after Bartlett got away. There were