Provisions were plentiful, as no less than two hundred and fifty musk oxen had been shot by the 1st of November, and there were numbers of hares and several herds of the white reindeer first mentioned by Hudson in his second voyage three hundred years ago. During the very mild winter eighty of the dogs died, and when sledging began only twenty teams of six each were available. The plan of the northern advance over the ice was to divide it into sections of about fifty miles each, with snow houses at each station, the nearest station being supplied from the base and supplying the next, and so on, thus keeping up an unbroken line of communication gradually extending nearer to the Pole, the sledges working backwards and forwards, outwards laden and inwards empty, between station and station along the line. The land was left at Point Moss, north-west of Cape Joseph Henry. At 84° 38´ a lead in the pack stopped the way for six days until the young ice was thick enough to bear, and forty miles further north the vanguard drifted east some seventy miles during a storm for another six days. On the 20th of April a region of much open water was reached, and from midnight to noon next day the last effort was made by Peary, Henson, and a small party of Eskimos, the farthest north, 87° 6´, being attained and immediately left in a rapid retreat for safety. Thus Peary went nearer to the Pole than Cagni by thirty-two minutes or thirty-seven statute miles, both being stopped by water with apparently similar conditions ahead of them. What the conditions may be along the intervening two hundred miles from Peary's farthest nobody knows; but although a good many things may happen between London and York, which is about the same distance, there is good reason for supposing that, even if there be land somewhere, the road is over a sea more or less packed with ice which is never without its channels. One thing is clear: the attainment of the Pole is a matter of money. Given the funds, the men and the dogs, and the ships, boats, sledges, and other things will be forthcoming, and the journey accomplished, not by a rush, but on some systematic station-to-station plan; though it is not impossible that it may be done by chance in some exceptional year, for the climate of the north is variable and has a wider range of temperature than that of Britain in its good years and its bad years.