NINDEMANN AND NOROS 119 



and the ice was like glass, so that they were driven 

 back. They looked about for ice which had been 

 roughened by the ripples beneath, and finding some 

 they succeeded at length in reaching the other side, 

 where were two wooden crosses beneath a bank, which 

 rose fifty feet above them. They pulled themselves up 

 the bank, but when they came to the hut which they 

 had kept in sight they found it a ruin nearly full of 

 snow. " While Noros was trying to make a place in it 

 for shelter, Nindemann saw a black object farther along 

 to the south and went to it. It was a small peaked 

 hut without a door, but large enough to hold two men. 

 There were some fresh wood shavings outside the hut 

 and higher up on the hill two boxes. On going to 

 them Nindemann found them old and decayed, and he 

 began to break one of them open. When he had 

 ripped off the top he discovered that there was another 

 box enclosed ; breaking into it he found a dead body, 

 and hastily left it. Doubtless the two crosses below on 

 the river bank were memorials of the two beings left 

 high up above the reach of the floods." 



In the small hut they found a sort of floor, the 

 boards of which they pulled up for firewood, and in a 

 hole beneath was a box in which were a couple of fish 

 and two fish heads ; and, as these were discovered, a 

 lemming came out of another hole and was promptly 

 caught. On the lemming, roasted on the ramrod, and 

 the fishes, which were so decayed that they dropped 

 apart as they were handled, they made their meal for 

 that day. Next day the snowstorm was so heavy that 

 they were driven back here after striving in vain to 

 make headway. On the Saturday, still without food, 



