ON THE DEVIL'S GLACIER 145 



nearing the Devil's Ballroom and Glacier. The next 

 day was brilliantly fine — temperature - 2'2° F. — with 

 a good breeze right aft. To our great joy, we got sight 

 of the land aroimd the Butcher's Shop. It was still a 

 long way off, of course, but was miraged up in the 

 warm, sunny air. We were extraordinarily lucky on 

 our homeward trip; we escaped the Devil's Ballroom 

 altogether. 



On January 1 we ought, according to our reckoning, 

 to reach the Devil's Glacier, and this held good. We 

 could see it at a great distance; huge hummocks and 

 ice-waves towered into the sky. But what astonished 

 us was that between these disturbances and on the far 

 side of them, we seemed to see an even, unbroken plain, 

 entirely unaffected by the broken surface. Mounts 

 Hassel, Wisting, and Bjaaland, lay as we had left them; 

 they were easy to recognize when we came a little 

 nearer to them. Now Mount Helmer Hanssen again 

 towered high into the air; it flashed and sparkled like 

 diamonds as it lay bathed in the rays of the morning 

 sun. We assumed that we had come nearer to this range 

 than when we were going south, and that this was the 

 reason of our finding the ground so changed. When 

 we were going south, it certainly looked impassable 

 between us and the mountains; but who could tell? 

 Perhaps in the middle of all the broken ground that 

 we then saw there was a good even stretch, and that we 

 had now been lucky enough to stumble upon it. But it 



