DRIFTING TO THE SOUTH. 135 



right seamanlike humour, even iu the most critical mo- 

 ments. As long as he had tobacco he made no trouble 

 of anything. On the 3rd of January, during the fright- 

 ful pressure of the ice which destroyed our floe, and 

 threatened every minute to sink our house, the cook 

 happened to be repairing the coffee-kettle. " If the floe 

 would only hold together until he had finished his kettle ! 

 he wished so to make the evening tea in it, so that, before 

 our departure, we might have something warm." 



Toilet and cleanliness have long since become uncer- 

 tain ideas with us. Washing is a luxury, which at the 

 uttermost we can only allow ourselves twice a week, and 

 which the scientific men have quite given up. The coal- 

 walls of our house, smoke from the lamp, and dust from 

 the stove have so blackened us, that we might be taken 

 for some of the choicest Esquimaux. Hair and beard 

 were intact from the time we left Bremen. Weeks have 

 passed since the clothes havfe left our bodies. The tem- 

 perature in the first three weeks of the new year, so 

 pregnant with interest for us, may on the whole be thus 

 characterized : — that, with northerly and north-easterly 

 winds, which were generally accompanied by violently 

 drifting snow, it was tolerably mild, between 23° F. and 9^ 

 F., whilst the few clear days with a south and west wind 

 brought us zero and 6° below. One of the weightiest 

 causes of the powerful ice-pressuro we had undergone, 

 seemed to be, together with the temporary influence of 

 the spring-tides, the fact that at this time we were in the 

 narrow sea-passage between Iceland and Greenland, where 

 the ice, carried on by the current (chiefly on account of 

 the numerous prominent capes on the east coast of Green- 

 land), must necessarily be pressed close. This movement. 



