118 THE GERMAN AECTIG EXPEDITION. 



short tours. The mass of ice was about seven nautical 

 miles in circumference, and seemed in all directions to 

 have a diameter of about a little more than two miles. 



An excellent picture of the monotony of the landscape 

 which surrounded us at the end of the year (end of 

 December and January), can be formed by imagining a 

 uniform plain, or field, covered with snow. The term 

 ^' field " indicates the size of a connected floating mass 

 of ice. Smaller pieces are called " floes," and still smaller 

 ones " drifts." The ice-raft, on which (as Dr. Laube 

 aptly remarked) " we were as the Lord's passengers," 

 drifting for months together between the sea and the 

 coast, was a solid field composed of these drifts and floes 

 compacted together. The average thickness of this was 

 about five feet above the water ; a fact which, according 

 to experience, would allow a submergence of at least 

 forty feet. Soundings from the edge of the ice were 

 not possible, as the line was lost in the shipwreck. 

 The piled-up snow, which was often eight feet high, 

 had at this time, the beginning of January, filled up • 

 every hole and crack on the field ; so that, without one 

 single resting-point, the eye wandered over the wearying 

 uniform white desert. If we were at any distance from 

 the hut, so deeply buried in the snow, every visible sign 

 had disappeared except the dark spot or line of the 

 chimney, the boats, and the staff" with the fluttering flag, 

 which after every whirlwind of snow was again unfurled. 

 Later in the spring, when the greater part of our field 

 had disappeared, the plain looked, owing to the pushed- 

 up pieces of ice and snow- wall, almost like animated 

 blocks of ice. Upon closer inspection these " ramparts " 

 seemed to be the fragments of the pushed-up walls of 



