Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/378

 a basis for further exploration to follow the event of my reaching the west side of Smith Sound with my vessel late in the summer; in other words, to ascertain what chance there was of carrying into effect my original design, which the circumstance of being forced into a winter harbor on the Greenland coast, instead of the coast opposite, had disturbed.

The extracts from my field diary, given in the last chapter, will have shown the reader the slowness of our progress; while a former chapter will have so far satisfied him concerning the track over which we had recently traveled as to make any review of it in this connection unnecessary. Although anticipating at the outset a grave obstacle in the hummocks, I was unprepared to encounter them in such formidable shape; and the failure of the foot party to make headway through them was a serious blow to my expectations. I had, however, prepared myself for every emergency, and looked forward to making up what I had lost by remaining in Smith's Sound another year.

The journey across the Sound from Cairn Point was unexampled in Arctic traveling. The distance from land to land, as the crow flies, did not exceed eighty miles; and yet, as hitherto observed, the journey consumed thirty-one days,—but little more than two miles daily. The track, however, which we were forced to choose, was often at least three times that of a straight line; and since almost every mile of that tortuous route was traveled over three and often five times, in bringing up the separate portions of our cargo, our actual distance did not probably average less than sixteen miles daily, or about five hundred miles in all, between Cairn Point and Cape Hawks. The last forty miles, made with dog-sledges alone, oc