Every one was glad to reach the surface of the old floes beyond this crazy zone of ice which was several miles in width.

As soon as we struck the old floes the going was much better.
There appeared to be no great depth of snow, only a few inches, and this had been hammered fairly hard by the winter winds.

Still the surface over which we traveled was very uneven, and in many places was distinctly trying to the sledges, the wood of which was made brittle by the low temperature, now in the minus fifties.

On the whole, however, I felt that if we encountered nothing worse than this in the first hundred miles from the land we should have no serious cause for complaint.
[Illustration: PASSING THROUGH A DEFILE IN ROUGH ICE] A little farther on, while walking alone behind my division, I met Kyutah of Marvin's division, hurrying back with empty sledge.

He had smashed his sledge so badly that it seemed better to go back to Cape Columbia for one of the reserve sledges there than to attempt to repair the broken one.