CABLE NEWS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2627, 8 October 1909, Page 5

CABLE NEWS.

the captain camped beside a well open lead, with dense black water. We built our igloos and turned in, but before I had fallen asleep I was roused by the movement of ice afrd found a startling condition of affairs. A rapidly widening road of black water ran but a few feet from our ig'oos. One of my teams of dogs escaped by only a few feet from being dragged by the movement of the ice to where another team had an equally narrow escape of being crushed by ice blocks piled over them. The ice on the north side of the lead was moving around eastward of the small floor on which we were. Bartlett’s igloos was drifting eastward in open water, and the side of our igloos threatened to follow suit. Kicking out the d-or of the igloos I called to Bartlett’s men to pack their sledge and be ready for a quick dash when a favorable chance arrived. We hurried the things on to the sledges, which the dogs had moved on to a large floe to the west of us. Then leaving one man to look out for the dogs and the sledgeS we hurried over to assist Bartlett’s party to join up tlio corner of their raft impinged on the ice on our side.

“For the rest of the night and during the next day we suffered the torments of the damned, wjth ice surging together, opening out, groaning and grinding, while the open water looked like the black smoke of a prairie fire. “Then the motion ceased and the open water closed. The atmosphere to the north cleared, and we pushed across before the ice should open again. We came to layers of young ice, some of which buckled under our sledges. This was a good long march. The next march was also a long one. We encountered a high wind, dead in our faces bitter and insistent. We concluded we were near the 88th parallel. The north wind had lost us several miles.

“Next morning Bartlett started to walk five or six miles to the north to make sure of reaching the 88th parallel. He found our position to he 87.44, showing the continued north wind had robbed us of a number of hard-earn-ed miles.

“Bartlett started on the back trail in command of m y fourth supporting party, with two Eskimos, one sledge, and 18 dogs. I felt pangs of regret as he disappeared in the distance, but it was only momentary. His work was still ahead, net in the rear. Bartlett had done good work, and had been a great help :o me. Circumstances thrust the bruat of the pioneering upon him, instead of dividing it among several, as I had planned. He had reason to take pride in this fact, that he had bettered the Italian record by a degree and a quarter, and had covered a distance equal to the entire distance the Italian expedition travelled from Franz Joseph’s Land to Cagne’s farthest north. I had given Bartlett this position and the post of honor in command of my fourth and last supporting party, and for two reasons —first, because of his magnificent handling of the Roosevelt, and, secondly, because he had cheerfully stood between me and many trifling annoyances on the expedition. The there was a third reason. It seemed to me appropriate in view of the magnificent British record of Arctic work, covering three centuries, that it should be a British subject who could boast that next to an American he had been nearest the Pole.”