Part of their way, however, lay across open country, for they were near the northern edge of the timber belt, and the straggling trees, dwarfed and bent by the wind, ran east and west in a deeply indented line.

In some places they boldly stretched out toward the Pole in long promontories; in others they fell back in wide bays which Blake, steering by compass, held straight across, afterward plunging again into the scrub.

Three days were spent in struggling through the broadest tongue, but, as a rule, a few hours' arduous march brought them out into the open.

Even there the ground was very rough and broken, and they were thankful for the numerous frozen creeks and lakes which provided an easier road.
Pushing on stubbornly, camping where they could find shelter and wood, for they could hardly have survived a night spent in the open without a fire, they made, by calculation, two hundred miles; and Blake believed that they must surely be near the Hudson Bay post..