SKETCHING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. 



CHAPTER II 



LONDON TO THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 



SELDOM for me did a London day open more peacefully 

 than on the summer morning of June 2, 1896. The air 

 was still. The sun shone softly through a light veil of mist, 

 as it was destined once or twice to shine upon us by the 

 shores of Ice Fjord. Thrushes sang in the mulberry tree 

 over my breakfast-table. The sounds of London were faint 

 and seemed remote. Every preparation was complete ; there 

 was nothing to be done. 



An hour later the five members of our united party were 

 wrestling with forty-two pieces of baggage in the maze and 

 scrimmage of King's Cross Railway Station. There was 

 Gregory carrying a bundle of geological hammers and crow- 

 bars, tied up with an old Snider, brown with East African 

 rust. There was Trevor-Battye in a suit of clothes acquired 

 in Moscow, when he arrived there in rags from Kolguev. 

 Garwood with an armful of newspapers, and my cousin with 

 an easel, poking out of a bundle of rugs, completed the party, 



