to bring us around again to "night"
marching, with the sun at our backs.

During the next march from Sunday to Monday, April 18th to 19th, there
was a continuation of the fine weather and we were still coming along on
my proposed schedule. Our longer sleep of the night before had heartened
both ourselves and the dogs, and with renewed energy we took to the
trail again about one o'clock in the afternoon. At a quarter past two we
passed Bartlett's igloo on the north side of an enormous lead which had
formed since we went up. We were a little over two hours crossing this
lead.

It was not until eleven that night when we again picked up the main
trail, in Henson's first pioneer march. When, traveling well in advance
of the sledges I picked it up and signaled to my men that I had found
it, they nearly went crazy with delight. The region over which we had
just come had been an open sea at the last full moon, and a brisk wind
from any direction excepting the north would make it the same again; or
the raftering from a north wind would make it a ragged surface of broken
plate glass.

It may seem strange to the reader that in this monotonous waste of ice
we could distinguish between the various sections of our upward marches
and recognize them on return. But, as I have said, my Eskimos know who
built or even who has occupied an igloo, with the same instinct by which
migratory birds recognize their old nests of the preceding year; and I
have traveled these arctic wastes so long and lived so long with these
instinctive children of Nature that my sense of location is almost as
keen as their own.

At midnight we came upon pieces of a sledge which Egingwah had abandoned
on the way up, and at three o'clock in the morning of the 19th we
reached the MacMillan-Goodsell return igloos. We had covered Henson's
three pioneer marches in fifteen and one-half hours of travel.

[Illustration: BREAKING CAMP. PUSHING THE SLEDGES UP TO THE TIRED DOGS]

Another dog played out that day and was shot, leaving me with thirty. At
the end of this march we could see the mountains of Grant Land in the
far distance to the south, and the sight thrilled us. It was like a
vision of the shores of the home land to sea-worn mariners.

Again, the next day, we made a double march. Starting late in the
afternoon we reached the sixth outward camp, "boiled the kettle," and
had a light lunch; then plunged on again until early in the morning of
the 20th, when w