_March 17th._—A glorious day, clear as a crystal and the sun is shining nearly twelve hours. The land distinctly visible, but not as far away as I could wish. The Captain and his party pulled out early and Clark and his party soon after. I brought up the rear a little later with my party. After working through about a mile of fearfully rough ice, we came out upon what looked as if it might be (and God knows I hoped it was) the comparatively unbroken homogeneous ice of the central Polar Sea. A beautiful sight, the level, slightly drifted snow plain stretching away apparently infinitely to the North. _March 18th._—Another glorious day but bitterly cold, the brandy remaining frozen and the petroleum white and viscid; my dogs very tired and unambitious. It is aggravating not to be travelling faster in such weather and going, and it is not pleasant to be at the rear attending to loose ends, but I have the consolation of knowing that my advance parties are, or ought to be, a good distance ahead, and that before long I shall be in my proper place at the very head of the line, breasting the air that comes direct from the pole uncontaminated by any form of life. At this camp one new sledge was made out of two broken ones. And so the work went on, the parties going and coming, myself in touch with and pushing those ahead of me and pulling those in the rear, so to speak, in a position where I could straighten out any little hitches and keep the distribution of the parties such as to minimise the work of igloo building, and prevent confusion rising when two or three parties got bunched together. It was brute hard work and bitter cold. The brandy continued frozen and oil viscid, but everyone was eager and cheerful. The Captain, Doctor, and Clark on the _qui vive_ all the time, and the Eskimos hustling with their usual willingness. On the 22d, at my camp on a big floe selected for this purpose, cache number two was established. Although the work was not moving with the speed which I could have desired, it was moving with such apparent smoothness that I constantly feared some insurmountable obstacle was waiting for us just ahead, and yet I felt that it might be that twenty years of work, disappointment and sacrifice would perhaps be allowed to win. During the night of the 21st at this camp the wind came on fresh from the west, blowing with distinct fierceness all night and day of the 22d and causing pronounced changes in the ice. Our big floe cracked and rumbled frequently and the walls of our igloo were split but not so seriously as to be beyond repair. Wind shelters were constructed for the dogs and they were double rationed. Although a bitter day, the 22d was the first day since I left land that I was held up by the weather, and I could have travelled on this day had there been any necessity for it, but to have done so would only have piled my party up on top of the Captain’s, who was now one