We had been in the field now just a month. We had covered not less than 400 miles of the most arduous travelling in temperatures of from –35° to –57° F., and we were just beginning our work, _i. e._, the conquest of the polar pack, the toughest undertaking in the whole expanse of the Arctic region. Some two miles from the cape was a belt of very recent young ice, running parallel with the general trend of the coast. Areas of rough ice caught in this compelled us to exaggerated zigzags, and doubling on our track. It was easier to go a mile round, on the young ice, than to force the sledge across one of these islands. The northern edge of the new ice was a high wall of heavily rubbled old ice, through which, after some reconnoissance, we found a passage to an old floe, where I gave the order to build an igloo. We were now about five miles from the land. The morning of the 7th brought us fine weather. Crossing the old floe we came upon a zone of old floe fragments deeply blanketed with snow. Through the irregularities of this we struggled; the dogs floundering, almost useless, occasionally one disappearing for a moment; now treading down the snow round a sledge to dig it out of a hole into which it had sunk, now lifting the sledges bodily over a barrier of blocks; veering right and left; doubling in our track; road-making with snowshoe and pickaxe. Late in the day a narrow ditch gave us a lift for a short distance, then one or two little patches of level going, then two or three small old floes which, though deep with snow, seemed like a Godsend compared with the wrenching earlier work. We camped in the lee of a large hummock on the northern edge of a small but very heavy old floe, everyone thoroughly tired, and the dogs dropping motionless in the snow as soon as the whip stopped. We were now due north to Hecla, and I estimated we had made some six miles, perhaps seven, perhaps only five. A day of work like this makes it difficult to estimate distances. This is a fair sample of our day’s work. On the 12th we were storm-bound by a gale from the west, which hid even those dogs fastened nearest to the igloo. During our stay here the old floes on which we were camped split in two with a loud report, and the ice cracked and rumbled and roared at frequent intervals.