JOURNEY BY SLEDGE T(^ THE FLIOELY FJORD. 315 



were an hour and a half before we could roll ourselves in 

 our blankets and go to rest. The narrow and cramped 

 position in which vfe lay in the small tent (nine feet long 

 and six feet broad) on the hard frozen ground, prevented 

 us from enjoying a good night's rest, although we were 

 quite warm enough ; and we had plenty of time in which to 

 consider how far superior a soft bed was. Although bears 

 were numerous round about us, and we met some almost 

 every day, we had not as yet set any watch during the night, 

 and had only taken a loaded gun and revolver into the tent 

 with us as a precaution. The time for rest on a sledge- ' 

 journey, if one wishes to press forward, is necessarily of 

 the shortest, and setting watch would, from the unavoid- 

 able loss of rest, be very prejudicial, or cause us to lose 

 many hours of very precious time. One must also con- 

 sider the wary nature of bears, and that they would always 

 have to destroy the tent before getting at us. But, indeed, 

 in all our sledge-journeys during sleeping time we were 

 spared the visits of such combative companions. Either 

 the bears preferred making no further acquaintance with 

 us, or they came at a time when we could best greet them 

 with a shot. 



The next morning, the 15th, we started at a quarter to 

 six, after a good breakfast, taking a north-westerly direc- 

 tion obliquely across Clavering Straits, in order to reach 

 the mainland; the temperature was 20.5° Fahr., the 

 weather fine, the wind quiet, and we brought the sledge 

 along over the hard snow with comparative ease. We 

 reached Cape Berlin after a six hours' journey. After a 

 mid-day rest we pulled on through snow deserts of ever- 

 increasing depth towards the mainland. This sur- 

 rounded a broad bay stretching to the south, and was 



