My Heavy, Thick-Soled Shoes, Resoled Just Before
Starting On The Trip Six Days Ago, Are About Worn Out And My Feet
Have Been Wet Every Night.
But no harm comes of it, nothing but good.
I succeeded in getting a warm breakfast in bed.
I reached over the
edge of my sled, got hold of a small cedar stick that I had been
carrying, whittled a lot of thin shavings from it, stored them on my
breast, then set fire to a piece of paper in a shallow tin can, added
a pinch of shavings, held the cup of water that always stood at my
bedside over the tiny blaze with one hand, and fed the fire by adding
little pinches of shavings until the water boiled, then pulling
my bread sack within reach, made a good warm breakfast, cooked and
eaten in bed. Thus refreshed, I surveyed the wilderness of crevassed,
hummocky ice and concluded to try to drag my little sled a mile or
two farther, then, finding encouragement, persevered, getting it
across innumerable crevasses and streams and around several lakes and
over and through the midst of hummocks, and at length reached the
western shore between five and six o'clock this evening, extremely
fatigued. This I consider a hard job well done, crossing so wildly
broken a glacier, fifteen miles of it from Snow Dome Mountain, in
two days with a sled weighing altogether not less than a hundred
pounds. I found innumerable crevasses, some of them brimful of water.
I crossed in most places just where the ice was close pressed and
welded after descending cascades and was being shoved over an upward
slope, thus closing the crevasses at the bottom, leaving only the
upper sun-melted beveled portion open for water to collect in.
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