one the
work.

The runners are longer, and are curved upwards at each end, so that they
resemble the profile of a canoe, and are expected to rise over the
inequalities of the ice much better than the old style. Lashed together
with sealskin thongs, about twelve feet long, by two feet wide and seven
inches high, the load can be spread along their entire length instead of
being piled up, and a more even distribution of the weights is made. The
Esquimos, used to their style of sledge, are of the opinion that the
new style will prove too much for one man and an ordinary team to
handle, but we have given both kinds a fair trial and it looks as if the
new type has the old beaten by a good margin.

The hunting is not going along as successfully as is desired. The sun is
sinking lower and lower, and the different hunting parties return with
poor luck, bringing to the ship nothing in some cases, and in others
only a few hares and some fish.

The Commander has told me that it is imperative that fresh meat be
secured, and now that I have done all that it is positively necessary
for me to do here at the ship, I am to take a couple of the Esquimo boys
and try my luck for musk-oxen or reindeer, so to-morrow, early in the
morning, it is off on the hunt.

This from my diary: Eight days out and not a shot, not a sight of game,
nothing. The night is coming quickly, the long months of darkness, of
quiet and cold, that, in spite of my years of experience, I can never
get used to; and up here at Sheridan it comes sooner and lasts longer
than it does down at Etah and Bowdoin Bay. Only a few days' difference,
but it _is_ longer, and I do not welcome it. Not a sound, except the
report of a glacier, broken off by its weight, and causing a new iceberg
to be born. The black darkness of the sky, the stars twinkling above,
and hour after hour going by with no sunlight. Every now and then a moon
when storms do not come, and always the cold, getting colder and colder,
and me out on the hunt for fresh meat. I know it; the same old story, a
man's work and a dog's life, and what does it amount to? What good is to
be done? I am tired, sick, sore, and discouraged.

The main thing was game, but I had a much livelier time with some
members of the Peary Arctic Club's expedition known as "our four-footed
friends"--the dogs.

The dogs are ever interesting. They never bark, and often bite, but
there is no danger from their bites. To get together a team t