The Spring and Summer of 1894. 433 



lanes in the ice, and skirted them carefully, no doubt in 

 the hope of finding a seal or two, and after that it had 

 gone off between the hummocks and over floes, with a 

 surface of nothing- but slush and water. Had the surface 



O 



been o-ood I should no doubt have overtaken Master 



o 



Bruin, but he had too long a start in the slushy snow. 



" A dismal, dispiriting landscape nothing but white 

 and grey. No shadows merely half obliterated forms 

 melting into the fog and slush. Everything is in a state 

 of disintegration, and one's foothold gives way at every 

 step. It is hard work for the poor snow-shoer who 

 stamps along through the slush and fog after bear tracks 



I that wind in and out among the hummocks, or over them. 

 The snow-shoes sink deep in, and the water often 

 reaches up to the ankles, so that it is hard work to get 

 them up or to force them forward ; but without them 

 one would be still worse off. 



" Every here and there this monotonous greyish-white- 

 ness is broken by the coal-black water, which winds, in 

 narrower or broader lanes, in between the hiofh hum- 



o 



mocks. White, snow-laden floes and lumps of ice float 

 on the dark surface, looking like white marble on a 

 black ground. Occasionally there is a larger dark- 

 coloured pool, where the wind gets a hold of the water 

 and forms small waves that ripple and plash against the 

 edge of the ice, the only signs of life in this desert tract. 

 It is like an old friend the sound of these playful wave- 

 lets ! And here, too, they eat away the floes and hollow 



2 F 



