They had four different kinds of sledges. From the illustrations it will appear how the eight-feet sledges differed from those used by M'Clintock, the Nares sledge being higher and more slender in the uprights. The eight-men sledge, such as the Marco Polo—which was bound for the Pole—had six uprights eighteen inches apart. It was eleven feet long, thirty-eight inches wide, eleven inches high, and weighed one hundred and thirty pounds. The tent, made of light, unbleached duck, was nine feet four inches long at the bottom, eight feet at the top, seven feet wide and high, and weighed forty-four pounds. The tent poles, five in number, weighed five pounds apiece. The coverlet weighed thirty-one pounds and a half, and the extra coverlet twenty pounds. The lower robe weighed twenty-three pounds, the waterproof floor-cloth fifteen. The eight sleeping-bags weighed eight pounds apiece, and the eight knapsacks, when packed, twelve pounds apiece. The shovel and two pickaxes accounted for twenty-one pounds, the store-bag for twenty-five, the cooking gear for twenty-nine, the gun and ammunition for twenty-five, the medical stores for twelve, the instruments for fifteen, and the tent for nine and a quarter. To this must be added a thousand and eighty pounds for forty-five days' provisions for the eight men, and we have the total of sixteen hundred and sixty-four pounds odd, which with seven men at the ropes gives each man a drag of about two hundred and thirty-eight pounds. In the spring the weight decreases as the provisions are consumed, but the rate of decrease is not the same in the autumn, for then the steadily falling temperature increases the weight of the outfit by the moisture it adds to the tent and clothing. In Markham's autumn journey the tent of thirty-two pounds came back as fifty-five, the coverlet as forty-eight, the lower robe as forty, the floor-cloth as forty, and everything else was heavier than at the start. The sledges mustered for their journeys on the 3rd of April. Seven in number, they were drawn up in single line according to the seniority of the leaders, all fully equipped and provisioned, and manned by fifty-three officers and men. On each was its commander's banner—a swallow-tailed flag charged with a St. George's cross and displaying the armorial bearings. As a precaution against snow-blindness, the men had been ordered to decorate the backs of their snow-jumpers with any device they thought fit, the result being a display of comic blazonry that often formed a topic of conversation when others failed. For the same reason the two boats carried on the north-going sledges were gaily decorated with the royal arms, and the rose, shamrock, and thistle; the artist, as on other occasions, being Doctor Moss, whose great difficulty in the matter was that in spite of the quantity of turpentine used in mixing the paint it would persist in freezing so that the brush became as stiff as a stick every few seconds. [Illustration]