Soon they came to very bad travelling, across steeply inclined snow slopes along the bordering cliffs of the ice-bound sea that they were forced to follow. In one place the trail led to a snow-drift thirty feet across, whose steep seaward face ended on a rocky ledge with a sheer outward fall of about thirty feet. It was clearly impossible to move the sledge across, and, Alpine-glacier fashion, a road was slowly hewn out with pick and axe. In other bad places the loaded sledge plunged headlong from the top of high hummocks into masses of rubble-ice in the intervening valleys. In such work animals are quite useless, for the Eskimo dog pulls hard and steady only under conditions where the sledge moves constantly forward. When once stalled the dog team sits on its haunches, welcoming a rest, and watches events composedly. In such cases the skilled driver untangles the traces, straightens out the team, calls out shrilly, cracks his whip loudly, and, as the dogs spring forward, gives a timely and skilful twist to the upstanders which helps the sledge to a new start. If the sledge does not then move it must be unloaded and the dogs again started, or it must be hauled by man-power to an easier part of the trail. This exhausting labor fell on the young officers, as Petersen was so sick as to be unable to do his part. Standing around, the Dane began to lose that warmth of vigorous circulation that alone keeps a man alive in arctic cold. When finally the dog driver was seized with fits of spasmodic shivering and his face showed frequent frostings, with bits of seriously frozen flesh, Egerton became greatly alarmed. As they were then making their way through very bad ice, camping at once was impossible. From time to time, however, the officers, quitting the sledge, took the sufferer in hand, and by five or ten minutes of work would get him so thawed out that he could safely go on. When a good camping-place was reached, though they had travelled only six miles, Egerton at once stopped, hoping that a good night's rest with warm drink and food would bring the Dane around. The moment that the tent was up Egerton sent Petersen in with directions to change his clothing, get into the sleeping-bag, and make himself comfortable until dinner was ready. Meanwhile the officers unloaded the sledge, picketed the dogs, and cared for the camp gear. On crawling into the tent Egerton found Petersen groaning, and on examination was shocked to find that he had crawled into the sleeping-bag without changing his clothing. Especially bad was his failure to replace his damp foot-gear by dry socks--a practice of recognized necessity in arctic travel to prevent the feet from freezing at night.