A Diary and Journal from the Second Grinnell Expedition

144

Sunday. Oct 22.

Morton reports the huts as about sixty five miles of march from the brig. Their route was by the old track to Anatok and thence by mingled ice foot and young floe, as far as Cape Hatherton Refuge Inlet (Fog Inlet) presented a remarka -ble sight. A broken mass of this fall and last spring ice, extended from its inner sides out to seaward to the open water, a most imposing spectacle for it seemed as if some force had tilted the tables in a same angle of inclination each table being a rhomboid not greater than ten yards in its longest diameter. This area was impenetrable, a series of entries, re entering in distant perspective each lined by ice spires from 8 to 20 feet high, hid horizon from the tenants of the sledge and so confunded the dogs that it was impossible to retain the points of the compass. This ice was doubled, Morton went out to seaward until he reached the Polynia and then committing himself to the flat recently frozen ice, made the passage in safety.

From Cape Hatherton they went to the cache as ordered but to my sorrow found evidences of bad faith on the part of the party abandoning the Expedition. These misguided men had not respected my injunctions as to the property at the boat. In the teeth of a written order, they carried off our scanty stock of needles matches, thread &c. All our sugar nearly all our rice and worse that all this the sole remaining remnant of Liquor Some ten gallons which