232 Chapter VI. 



" Sunday, October Sth. Beautiful weather. Made a 

 snow-shoe expedition westward, all the dogs following. 

 The running was a little spoiled by the brine, which 

 soaks up through the snow from the surface of the ice 

 flat, newly frozen ice, with older, uneven blocks break- 

 ing through it. I seated myself on a snow hummock far 

 away out ; the dogs crowded round to be patted. My 

 eye wandered over the great snow plain, endless and 

 solitary, nothing but snow, snow everywhere. 



" The observations to-day gave us an unpleasant 

 surprise ; we are now down in 78 35' north latitude ; 

 but there is a simple enough explanation of this, when 

 one thinks of all the northerly and north-westerly wind 

 we have had lately, with open water not far to the south 

 of us. As soon as everything is frozen we must go 

 north again : there can be no question of that ; but none 

 the less this state of matters is unpleasant. I find some 

 comfort in the fact that we have also drifted a little east, 

 so that at all events we have kept with the wind and are 

 not drifting down westward. 



"Monday, October Qth. I was feverish both during 

 last night and to-day. Goodness knows what is the 

 meaning of such nonsense. When I was taking water 

 samples in the morning I discovered that the water- 

 lifter suddenly stopped at the depth of a little less than 

 So fathoms. It was really the bottom. So we have 

 drifted south again to the shallow water. We let the 

 weight lie at the bottom for a little, and saw by the line 



