From this camp we went in two marches to Cape Herschel, where we left
the heaviest of our baggage, with Joe and the other Inuits, taking only
the white men of the party, with Toolooah and his family, and Owanork,
Equeesik's youngest brother, to assist in the management of the sled,
and started for Cape Felix on the 17th. We left instructions with Joe
to remain at Cape Herschel as long as they could find enough to eat
there; but if there was more game further down the coast, or on the
main-land, to go there, and leave stones to indicate their route, so
Toolooah would know where to look for them when we returned from Cape
Felix. We took a course but little west of north, and at night encamped
at the head of Washington Bay. Here we left the salt-water ice and
started across land, keeping the same direction, with the intention of
striking Collinson Inlet near its head. Our surprise can then be
imagined when, after two days' travelling, we came out on Erebus Bay,
which we thought was far to the west. This discrepancy was afterward
accounted for when we found, by a comparison with the position of
points between Cape Jane Franklin and Cape Felix, established by Sir
James Ross, and confirmed by the officers of the 'Erebus' and
'Terror', that Cape Herschel is really about eighteen or twenty
miles further west than mapped on the Admiralty charts.
The travelling across land was exceedingly heavy and tedious, owing to
the softening condition of the snow, and to the lakes being covered
with water to the depth of about six or eight inches. In the morning
the slight crust on the snow, formed during the night, would break
through at nearly every step; while during the rest of the day it was
simply wading through slush or water. We found the salt-water ice also
in a bad condition for travelling. It was very old ice, and as hummocky
as it is possible for ice to be. We usually kept near the coast, where
we found pretty good sledging; but one day we took to the hummocks, to
avoid a great detour that following the shore ice would have entailed
upon us, and did it to our sorrow. The fall snows and winter winds had
piled up around and among the hummocks, filling in the interstices, so
that, were the snow frozen, the sledging would not have been so very
difficult; but the sun had already poured his rays upon it, day and
night, for so long a time that the snow was soft, and nearly every step
would break through.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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