CHAPTER XIII
WE BEGIN OUR SLEDGING
On January seventeenth I decided that before long I would send a party of four men to the land to look out for game, see whether any driftwood was to be found on Wrangell Island, report on ice conditions and blaze a trail over the ice. This expedition would make an end to the men’s enforced inactivity and the natural uneasiness of some of them, which I was unwilling to prolong if I could avoid doing so, and would, besides, be valuable in determining our subsequent movements. I did not like to take the whole party to the island without previously transporting supplies that would be sure to last them for at least four months. Furthermore, the men had been living for a long time on shipboard and were not inured to the cold or yet in condition to withstand the privations they would have to undergo. None of them had had any experience in travelling over the Arctic ice during the brief and meagre light and in the low temperatures which would be our portion for another month, and the sledging of supplies towards the island would afford them the necessary practice. Travelling over the sea-ice at any time is altogether different from land travelling. On the sea-ice you have to spend a great deal of time looking about for good places to make the road for the sledging of supplies, for the ice is continually cracking and shifting and piling up in fantastic ridges from the pressure when the fissures close up, especially as near the land as we were, and its surface is so much rougher than the crystal levels of the lakes and ponds on which the landsman goes skating that there can hardly be said to be any comparison.