Started a party of three Eskimos off for Markham Inlet after musk-oxen. After dinner three Eskimos came in with the meat of four musk-oxen killed in Rowan Bay, and in the evening the Porter Bay party returned with the meat and skins of seven reindeer killed in a valley on Fielden Peninsula. These, the first specimens of this magnificent snow-white animal, were from a herd of eleven surprised in a valley close to Cape Joseph Henry, and among the seven was the wide-antlered buck leader. These beautiful animals, in their winter dress almost as white as the snow which they traverse, were later found scattered over the entire region from Cape Hecla to Lake Hazen, and westward along the north Grant Land coast, over fifty specimens in all being secured. The party reported Porter Bay still filled with the unbroken ice of the previous winter, and therefore impracticable for our winter quarters. The night of the 11th was a perfect Arctic autumn night. To the south over the land the sky pearl-white; west and northwest, about the couchant mass of Cape Joseph Henry, orange-yellow; north, over the Polar Sea, gray-white; east and southeast the snow-clad Greenland coast lay under the purple shadows of the coming “Great Night.” On the 12th a fresh southerly wind set the snow drifting savagely on all the uplands, flung out a long snow-banner from the summit of Rawson, and formed a broad lane of water reaching from behind Rawson past us and on toward Cape Henry. During the 12th and the 13th every effort was made with pickaxes and dynamite to effect a passage to this water, but without success. On the 14th, I sent a party of four Eskimo hunters off to Lake Hazen. Since our arrival, the Eskimos, when not otherwise engaged, were getting the supplies from the main and after holds up on deck, in readiness for landing as soon as it was settled where our winter quarters would be.