The Winter Night. 361 



The cracks were often covered with loose ice, so that 

 one could easily enough fall into them, just as in 

 crossing- a dangerous glacier. 



"Saturday, February 24th. Observations to-day 

 .show us to be in 79 54' N. lat, 132 57' E. long. 

 Strange that we should have come so far south when 

 the north or north-west wind only blew for twenty-four 

 hours. 



"Sunday, February 25th. It looks as if the ice were 

 drifting eastwards now. Oh ! I see pictures of summer 

 and green trees and rippling streams. I am reading 

 of valley and mountain life, and I grow sick at heart 

 and enervated. Why dwell on such things just now ? 

 It will be many a long day before we can see all that 

 again. We are going at the miserable pace of a snail, 

 but not so surely as it goes. We carry our house with 

 us ; but what we clo one day is undone the next. 



" Monday, February 26th. We are drifting north- 

 east. A tremendous snowstorm is going on. The wind 

 has at times a velocity of over 35 feet per second ; 

 it is howling in the rigging, whistling over the ice, 

 and the snow is drifting so badly that a man might 

 be lost in it quite near at hand. We are sitting here 

 listening to the howling in the chimney, and in the 

 ventilators, just as if we were sitting in a house at 

 home in Norway. The wings of the windmill have 

 been going round at such a rate that you could hardly 

 distinguish them ; but we have had to stop the mill 



