172 THE GERMAN AliCTIC EXPEDITION. 



wliere we passed tlie niglit and tlie following day. Now, 

 indeed, we had the certainty of knowing that we were 

 near Eriedrichsthal, and might give ourselves up to 

 the joyful hope of soon being once more among men. 

 Strangely enough, up to this time, we had not had a 

 glimpse of an Esquimaux, though we might reasonably 

 conclude that they were now busy in these waters catch- 

 ing the seals. Later we learnt that this (which is for 

 the Greenlander a weighty business) was carried on to 

 the south of Cape Farewell. The bank rises from the 

 spot wliere we were, in an oblique direction, about 320 

 feet, forming a wide hilly plateau inland, on the soft, 

 elastic, mossy carpet of which we stretched ourselves in 

 the noonday sun and enjoyed some hours of long-wanted 

 rest. Here and there, half hidden in the moss, were 

 small ^ blue flowers. Some of our party went hunting, 

 but shot nothing but a few birds. 



In the afternoon came the tide, which rose eight feet, 

 and with a pretty strong north-east wind made such 

 breakers that would have been dangerous to us, if some 

 of the men had not been on the spot at the time, and 

 held the boat, which was driving on to the shore, with 

 the oars. Towards evening, the water retreated, the 

 boats lay still, and we laid ourselves down with the 

 conviction that the next night we should pass under a 

 roof in Friedrichsthal. The glaciers which hung every 

 wliere on the rocks of the island, now like birds'-nests 

 between the needles and the rocky pinnacles, now of 

 considerable strength, stretching down the declivities, 

 no longer reached (so Dr. Laube ajfirmed) down to the 

 sea, though in some places they protruded their moraines 

 low down, and some of the broken ice getting loose 



