262 SPITSBERGEN chap, xix 



It is a death-trap. You will probably find it closed at the 

 south end, and when you turn back the ice has come down 

 and corked it at the north. You are shut in for good. It 

 is now August, and the ice must be coming down." 



Some of the tourists borrowed the ponies and held 

 a gymkana. Then there was a dance at the inn, kept up to 

 an early hour. After it, the company marched down in 

 military order, with a riddle and a guitar at their head, and 

 paid our camp a visit. There was cheering and photograph- 

 ing by the pale grey light. A few hours later the ship steamed 

 off for Sassen Bay in the continuing drizzle, carrying the 

 De Geer party with it to map the end of Post Glacier for 

 comparison with previous records of its form. Left alone, 

 we continued labouring at the baggage in intervals between 

 rain and snow. The ponies, and what was left of their hay 

 and oats, were to be sent back by the next Lofoten to Tromso 

 for sale. All baggage not further required was to go with 

 them, for the little Expres had room for us only at a tight 

 pinch, and no room at all for aught else save coals. Thus 

 everything had to be sorted, and boxes and bales filled and 

 nailed or sewn up, each as completed being piled on one 

 of two heaps according to its destination. 



During this process of packing at the end of a journey, 

 mistakes in equipment become emphatically apparent. From 

 day to day on the route one learns what things needful 

 have been forgotten. At the end one discovers what super- 

 fluities have been brought, and still more, what useful things, 

 duly brought, have never been used, because they were not 

 in the right place at the right time. Our chief superfluities 

 were in pony food, unnecessary garments, and snow-shoe 

 apparatus. Spitsbergen, though it affords little food for man, 

 is generous to beasts. We had six trusses of hay and as 

 many sacks of oats that were never required. Snow shoes 

 were too bulky to be carried inland on the sledges. The 



