We found the travelling on Back's River much more tedious than we had anticipated, owing to the bare ice in the vicinity of the open-water rapids and the intense cold which kept the air filled with minute particles of ice from the freezing of the steam of the open water. These little particles of ice would fall upon the hard snow, which otherwise would have been good sledging, and remain separated from each other so that you could brush them up like sand, and were, in fact, nearly as hard as sand, so that it was almost impossible to drag the sledges along. The thermometer would frequently register -50 degrees and -60 degrees when we were moving with a strong wind blowing directly in our faces. Such travelling as this is simply terrible, and it is astonishing that we were able to do it without encountering any severe frost-bites. Indeed, we travelled one day with the thermometer -69 degrees, and, a gale blowing at this time, both white men and Inuits were more or less frost-bitten, but merely the little nippings of nose, cheeks, and wrists that one soon gets accustomed to in this country. As Lieutenant Schwatka says, it is like almost all other dangers that you hear and read about, they seem to dwindle when you meet them boldly face to face. A battle always seems more terrible to those in the rear than to those in the front lines. It was a noticeable fact that our course up the river was considerably east of south, instead of west, as mapped upon the Admiralty chart. There could be no mistake in regard to this when we could daily see the sun rise and set on the right of our general line of travel. It was near the end of December before we reached the vicinity of Mount Meadowbank, though we had hoped to be far beyond it by that time. Storms had kept us in camp several days during the journey up the river, and our provisions were nearly all exhausted, so that we had to lie over to hunt for game. The hunters could find nothing near the river, and were obliged to go with a sled one day's march to the east, build an igloo, and hunt from there. It was terribly cold for them, sleeping in an igloo, without fire or blankets, merely a shelter from the wind, and forced, as they were, to sleep in their clothes. I have had such experience and know what it is. In such cases one suffers more from cold feet than anything else. They would be intensely cold with dry stockings, but one's stockings are always wet from perspiration after walking, and when compelled to wear them at night cause great suffering.