304 Knud Rasmussen. 



our luck on this glacier lake, where the rounded contours of the 

 country with its lakes and valleys seemed likely to be a haunt of the 

 musk ox which were our only hope of safety. 



I shall in the following pages endeavour to give a brief sketch 

 of the situation from time to time. The hunting which occupied us, 

 as it turned out, through the whole of our stay on the east coast, 

 proved in many respects a distinctive feature of the expedition, which, 

 it will be remembered, was originally only provisioned for a month. 

 On our arrival at Zig-Zag Valley we had only dogs' food enough for 

 two meals, and our chances of getting forward therefore depended 

 entirely on our procuring game. 



We had been hard at work for some four and twenty hours by 

 the time we got down on to the glacier lake which lay ahead of the 

 spot where we had made the descent; the business of getting dogs, 

 sledges and gear lowered down over a precipice 20 m. high had been 

 particularly exciting and fatiguing. We had, moreover, naturally not 

 been able to get a proper meal all the time, and were thus both 

 hungry and sleepy when we swung out over a frozen watercourse on 

 to the lake to find a suitable camping place. We sat drowsily on our 

 sledges, dozing from time to time, and sometimes only \yaking when 

 we were thrown off, or when the dogs, who soon discovered our 

 condition, pulled up altogether and declined to work alone. 



Our lethargic condition was further aggravated by the heat, which 

 to us seemed nothing less than tropical. It was as if we had been 

 suddenly transported from the heart of winter into the full blaze of 

 summer. Accustomed as we were to the low temperature and con- 

 tinual snowstorms of the inland ice, the clean sun of the open country 

 burned on our faces till they smarted, and each breeze poured heat 

 in over our bodies. We enjoyed it thoroughly at first, and were keenly 

 thankful for the warmth, flinging off our furs and shouting with 

 delight at being able to sit half naked on the sledges in 12 degrees 

 of cold, which seemed as 12 degrees of heat to men dressed, fed, and 

 generally fixed up to the pitch of "mercury frozen". Soon, however, 

 the warmth brought on a slackness, a painful feeling of heaviness, 

 which made itself felt in every muscle, until we could scarcely keep 

 our eyes open at all. All the power of resistance with which we had 

 struggled against the inland ice throughout the month seemed ebbing 

 out, yielding place to that improvident enjoyment of the moment, 

 which one is always tempted to give way to at the first breath of 

 spring after a hard winter. 



There was much to be done, however, as we knew, before we 

 could rest. We had to camp, secure the dogs, cook our meal, and eat, 

 and even then, we should have to make a thorough reconnaissance 

 of the surroundings before we could venture to sleep. It was neces- 

 sary to ascertain as soon as possible what our new hunting grounds 



