At times, for a few hundred yards, the sled would glide with little effort over smooth, polished ice; then would come a long sand-bar, the side of which we had to hug close, and the ice upon it was what is called "shell-ice," through several layers of which we broke at every step. As the river fell, each night had left a thin sheet of ice underneath the preceding night's ice, and the foot crashed through the layers and the sled runners cut through them down to the gravel and sand at the bottom. Then would come another smooth stretch on which we made good time. But as we advanced up the river the current was swifter and swifter and the ice conditions grew steadily worse. Here was a steep-cut bank with just about eighteen or twenty inches of ice adhering to it and the black, rushing water beyond. We must either get our load along that shelf or unload the sled and pack everything over the face of a rocky bluff. Arthur passed over it first, testing gently with the axe, and found it none too strong. But the alternative was so toilsome that we resolved to take the chance. The doctor put the trace over his shoulders, Arthur took the handle-bars, while I climbed to a ledge of the rocks and, with a rope made of a pair of camel's-hair puttees unwound for the purpose and fastened to the sled, took all the weight I could and eased the sled over the worst place where the ice sloped to the water. If the ice had broken I might have held the sled from sinking until one of the others came to me, or I might not; the boys would probably have gone in too. It was a most risky spot and the sort of chance no one would think of taking under ordinary circumstances. As it was, the ice broke under Arthur's feet, and only by throwing his weight on the sled did he save himself a ducking. But we got the load safely across. A good run of perhaps a mile, and then we had to go back at least half a mile, for the ice played out altogether on our side of the river as we reached the Batzakaket, and there was open water in the middle. To reach the shore ice that was continuous on the other side, we had to "double" the open water. With such varying fortune the day passed, and we camped on the level ice of a little creek tributary to the right bank, having made perhaps another nineteen miles.