312 I. P. Косн. 
within a few minutes, one may with sufficient exactitude determine 
one’s course by the sun. In order to achieve as great accuracy as 
possible in the bearings, I have often drawn a compass card in the 
snow and taken my bearings from it. 
The distances we determined by the hodometer (see p.260). In 
favourable circumstances and on snow where the going was good, 
the indications of the counter were to be reduced by nearly 2 °/o; 
in unfavourable conditions and particularly in pack ice the reduction 
might amount to as much as 10°o, or perhaps even more. On 
smooth glare ice the hodometer might indicate 10 °/o—20 °/o too little. 
Add to this that under difficult eircumstances it was often damaged 
to such an extent that it could only be repaired in camp. The 
hodometer is thus a very unreliable distance measurer, when one is 
travelling on sea ice. Nevertheless the measuring of distances by 
means of the hodometer serves as a support when preparing the 
maps; therefore the journal ought not only to contain an indication 
of the hodometer distances, but also to give a valuation of them, as 
an estimate based upon experience. Several examples of such a 
valuation will be found in the subsequent extract from my diary. 
Map sketching during the voyage. 
Before starting on the sledge journey to Peary Land in 1907, I 
had drawn a network of meridians and parallels, within the limits 
of which I thought that our route would lie. On this network which 
was drawn to the scale 1:2000000 we intended to mark off roughly 
the whole of the distance covered. The object of this map was, 
among other things, already on the outward journey to obtain the 
best general view available of the various cartographic tasks of the 
expedition, so that they might be assigned to the various sledge 
parties, as they turned back and started on their homeward journey. 
During the journey north in 1907 I myself made all the ob- 
servations, and according to these I made, day by day, the general 
map of the distance covered. The map proved excellently adapted 
for its purpose. On the basis of it instructions were given to Bistrup 
and Тнозтвор as regards the cartographic tasks, which they were to 
along the coast, and we consequently overshot the depot, which we desired to 
reach. by several kilometres. Had we relied on the compass, we should, in all 
probability, have arrived at the depot. 
On Vatnajökull in 1904, after a snowstorm which had completely effaced 
our tracks, I have found my tent in a dense fog, though I had been about 
twenty kilometres away from it. That time I steered by a pocket compass, 
but besides I was very materially guided by certain peculiarities in the surface 
of the glacier. 
