310 Knud Rasmussen. 



We have now reduced the number of our dogs to 40, which is 

 still ample. I think too, we did well in sacrificing the others, as I 

 have an idea that we have a hard time ahead. At this time of year, 

 the big game is to be found down near the coasts, and not so far 

 inland, as is also shown by the many old winter tracks we have 

 found here. They keep to the coast lands in the spring, and we are 

 hardly likely to find game in any quantity before we have reached 

 sea ice. 



Meantime, the best thing we can do is to set about getting there. 



It took us from six in the morning of the 18th to six in the 

 morning of the 19th to get down over those waterfalls with all our 

 gear. It was tiring work, but exciting, and dangerous into the bar- 

 gain, as everything had to be lowered down into the gulf below the 

 glacier, which now and again startled us by calving some hundreds 

 of tons quite close to where we were. The lowering was done as be- 

 fore, by hacking a hole in the ice of the fall, and making the end of 

 the lines fast there. 



Freuchen's report gives a detailed account of the localities, both 

 here and in the Zig-Zag Valley; I need not therefore do more than 



refer to this here. 



I 

 Difficulties in the Zig-Zag Valley. 



Diary notes. 



As I thought. We had been looking forward to that last fall of 

 snow, hoping that it might give us better going, and so it has. Gravel 

 and stones are covered now, and we are making very decent progress 

 on our way down. It took us only six or seven hours to get from 

 the lower lake (Nedresø) to the place where Inukitsoq made his bag 

 of eight. This was much better than we could have hoped for. 



We loosed the dogs as soon as we got there, and let them eat 

 their fill of such meat as was left on the carcases, which was not a 

 little. When at last they had finished, after quarrelling and fighting 

 for several hours over the remains, all were visibly bigger about the 

 waist. 



Next day the weather was fine: not a breath of wind, and the 

 heat vapours from the newly fallen snow quivering in the air. It was 

 a beautiful sight looking out over the valley, the ground slashed 

 everywhere with ravines running this way and that, gentle slopes 

 covered with scattered growths of grass, heather and willow, and 

 threaded with little watercourses from the many small lakes. It was 

 proper musk ox country, and we could not but feel that things looked 

 promising all round. The snow lay white and virgin over valley and 

 hill, so gleamingly, glitteringly new that no trodden track could escape 

 our eves. There had been no wind since the snow first fell, so that 



