WANDERINGS OF THE DOGS 373 



hair over half his body. Madeiro, born at Madeira, dis- 

 appeared early in the autumn ; Tom disappeared later 

 both these undoubtedly fell into crevasses. We had a 

 very good opportunity twice of seeing how this 

 might happen; both times we saw the dog disappear 

 into the crevasse, and could watch him from the surface. 

 He went quite quietly backwards and forwards down 

 below without uttering a sound. These crevasses were 

 not deep, but they were steep-sided, so that the dog 

 could not get out without help. The two dogs I have 

 mentioned undoubtedly met their death in this way: 

 a slow death it must be, when one remembers how 

 tenacious of life a dog is. It happened several times 

 that dogs disappeared, were absent for some days, and 

 then came back ; possibly they had been down a crevasse, 

 and had finally succeeded in getting out of it again. 

 Curiously enough, they did not pay much attention to 

 the weather when they went on trips of this kind. 

 When the humour took them, they would disappear, 

 even if the temperature was down in the fifties below 

 zero, with wind and driving snow. Thus Jaala, a lady 

 belonging to Bjaaland, took it into her head to go off 

 with three attendant cavaliers. We came upon them 

 later; they were then lying quietly behind a hummock 

 down on the ice, and seemed to be quite happy. They 

 had been away for about eight days without food, and 

 during that time the temperature had seldom been above 

 - 58 F. 



