The ice-foot along this section of the coast was the same as was found here by Egerton and Rawson in 1876, and Pavy in 1882, necessitating the hewing of an almost continuous road; but a party of willing, lighthearted Eskimos makes comparatively easy work of what would be a slow and heart-breaking job for two or three white men. Beyond Black Cape the ice-foot improved in character, and I pushed along to camp at the _Alert’s_ winter quarters. Simultaneously with seeing the _Alert’s_ cairn three musk-oxen were seen a short distance inland, and secured. The animals were very thin and furnished but a scant meal for my dogs. One march from here carried us to Cape Richardson, and the next under the lee of View Point, where we were stopped and driven to build our igloo with all possible speed by one of the common Arctic gales. There were young ice, pools of water, and a nearly continuous water sky all along the shore. As the last march had been through deep snow, I did not dare to attempt the English short cut across Fielden Peninsula behind Cape Joseph Henry, preferring to take the ice-foot route round it. For a short distance this was the worst bit of ice-foot I have ever encountered. By the slipping of my sledge two men nearly lost their lives, saving themselves by the merest chance, with their feet already dangling over the crest of a vertical face of ice some fifty feet in height. At the very extremity of the cape we were forced to pass our sledges along a shelf of ice, less than three feet in width, glued against the face of the cliff at an elevation which I estimated at the time as seventy-five feet above the ragged surface of the floe beneath. On the western side of the cape the ice-foot broadened and became nearly level, but was smothered in such a depth of light snow that it stalled us and we went into camp. The next day we made Crozier Island. During April 2d and 3d we were held here by a westerly storm, and the 4th and 5th were devoted to hunting musk-oxen, of which three were secured, two of them being very small. From here I sent back three Eskimos, keeping Henson and four Eskimos with me. Reconnoissances of the polar pack northward were made with the glasses from the summit of the island and from Cape Hecla. The pack was very rough, but apparently not as bad as that which I saw north of Cape Washington two years before. Though unquestionably difficult, it yet looked as though we might make some progress through it unless the snow was too deep and soft. This was a detail which the glasses could not determine. On the morning of April 6th I left Crozier Island, and a few hours later, at the point of Cape Hecla, we swung our sledges sharply to the right and climbed over and down the parapet of the ice-foot on to the polar pack. As the sledges plunged down from the ice-foot their noses were buried out of sight, the dogs wallowed belly deep in the snow, and we began our struggle due northward.