The Ely miner. [volume] (Ely, Minn.) 1895-1986, 1908-01-24

Cnem, as our SleQgo6 would nave DrOK.
en- down, and, even with the greatest
care, both in making roads and in
driving, we had to strip the underrun-
ners from one of the sledges.
"On April Z, about "a miles off land
and 81 miles north of our last sound
ing with bottom, we took a sounding
with the sounding machine and found
$40 meters and no bottom. We had
not expected to find such deep water
so close to shore, but this deep sound
ing indicated that we were beyond the
edge of the continental shelf.
On April 10 we began to realize
that there could be little doubt now
that we had passed the edge of the
continental shelf. On April 26 it was,
for the first time, above freezing, max.
ing the snow still softer than before,
and water ran from the blocks of ice.
The travelling was bad, we saw very
little of the old foe, and the ice was
very much broken, so that our
progress was slow. On this day we
used our raft for the first time in
ferrying across lane about 100 yards
wide. AS we became more expert we
could rig up the raft, ferry all our out
fit across, load the sledges, and be
ready to start in IS minutes. The raft
was made of two nine-foot sledges
dashed together with two heavy poles,
the frame thus made being covered
with a piece of canvas. The raft
could carry an 11-foot sledge with a
load, total of 800 pounds, with
man sitting astride, in order to pull
it across. There was not much free
board, to be sure, and we had to move
carefully to keep the raft from swamp.
ing, but we had no mishap. The total
weight carried extra to construct the
raft was 20 pounds, of which IA
pounds was the cover This was USE
full as tent cover, and it made the
tent warm and comfortable.
THE going became worse and
worse, and whenever we were not
travelling over the old foe (and this
was rather scarce now we had ridge
after ridge of heavy rubble, with deep,
soft snow. A still worse hindrance to
progress were the numerous lanes,
now covered with thin coating of
ice, too thin to walk over and too thick
for the raft. From two of our sledges
we might expect a complete Sreak.
down OF either of them at. any time.
One lead was lost, so we could not
take soundings in deep water, and it
was only too evident that we could
do no mere here, but had better try
to reach land, an undertaking which
was considerably more difficult than
we had expected.
1.-THE return march began on April
20, latitude II degrees II minutes
north and longitude lat degrees A
minutes west. Unluckily we lost our
heavy pickaxe the first day. It
slipped through thin ice, and our
small one was too light to be of much
use in the heavy ice. This pick, too.
we lost two days later by. the break.
ing of the sounding wire. The loss of
the pickaxes caused us considerable
extra work and many delays. 1t was
plain to us that we could not have
done anything whatever without them.
On our retreat we had many wide
cracks to pass, and by way of variety
We're often compelled to crawl over
pressure ridges so steep that we at
times had to unharness the dogs and
lift the sledges over bodily"
Next spring Capt. Mikkelsen will
make another more extended sledge
journey northward, starting from De-
marcation Point, about so miles west
of Herschel island, which is destined
to increase our knowledge of the ex.
tent and depth of the Great North
Polar sea, and will probably solve the
existence of unknown lands and con.
tinents in this region. In the fall of
1909 the expedition will return to the
United States