This departure of the procession was a noiseless one, for the freezing east wind carried all sounds away.

It was also invisible after the first few moments--men and dogs being swallowed up almost immediately in the wind haze and the drifting snow.
I finally brought up the rear with my own division, after getting things into some semblance of order, and giving the two disabled men left at Cape Columbia their final instructions to remain quietly in the igloo there, using certain supplies which were left with them until the first supporting party returned to Cape Columbia, when they were to go back with it to the ship.
An hour after I left camp my division had crossed the glacial fringe, and the last man, sledge, and dog of the Northern party--comprising altogether twenty-four men, nineteen sledges, and one hundred and thirty-three dogs--was at last on the ice of the Arctic Ocean, about latitude 83 deg..
[Illustration: WORKING THROUGH AN EXPANSE OF ROUGH ICE] Our start from the land this last time was eight days earlier than the start three years before, six days of calendar time and two days of distance, our present latitude being about two marches farther north than Cape Hecla, our former point of departure.
When we were far enough out on the ice to be away from the shelter of the land, we got the full force of the violent wind.

But it was not in our faces, and as we had a trail which could be followed, even if with heads down and eyes half closed, the wind did not impede us or cause us serious discomfort.

Nevertheless, I did not like to dwell upon the inevitable effect which it would have upon the ice farther out--the opening of leads across our route.
When we dropped off the edge of the glacial fringe onto the pressure ridges of the tidal crack already described, in spite of the free use of our pickaxes and the pickaxes of the pioneer division, which had gone before, the trail was a most trying one for men, dogs, and sledges, especially the old Eskimo type of sledge.

The new "Peary" sledges, by reason of their length and shape, rode much more easily and with less strain than the others.