81У 
324 I. P. Косн. 
as they would otherwise be frozen stiff by next morning. So we 
went ahead with this not very agreeable work, tired but in very 
high spirits, and finally at 1 a.m. on the 8/У we could take to our 
sleeping bags, with a clear conscience and every reason to hope 
that we might attain our aim. We had then worked hard for thirty 
hours at a stretch, at a period when we were physically rather 
weakened by overwork, seeing that seventeen days of travel had 
elapsed since our last day of rest. 
We slept for fourteen hours, and thus inaugurated our day of 
rest in a worthy manner. After that we fried a steak; as we had 
no butter, we used ox tallow, and it tasted excellent. But when we 
had eaten, peace was at an end, for no sooner had Tobias left the 
tent than he returned, thrust his head into it and said: “Косн, many 
musk oxen!” This time we set out, all the three of us, and with 
the majority of our dogs. A few kilometres from us a herd of musk 
oxen were grazing, Consisting of two bulls, three cows, a two year- 
old bull calf, two one or two year-old cow calves, and three sucking 
calves, 88, 85 and 87 cm long, in all eleven animals. When the dogs 
attacked them, they formed a square, after which ToBias and BERTELSEN 
began to shoot, while I photographed them. 
We now returned in order to fetch harness and traces for the 
dogs, with the view of making them drag the oxen to the tent — 
sledges we could not use — but before we got back, a heavy drift 
of snow set in, so that it seemed uncertain whether we could find 
the tent, in case our traces had been effaced. We immediately 
returned to the tent, but in order to do something, now that we had 
set about it, we fetched the meat from the day before and stowed 
it in our tent. It would never have done to leave it in the open, 
as the dogs would then have been in a state of perpetual surfeit 
and consequently unfit for work, when in a day or two we were 
again going to start. 
It was indeed a grand day for us, as we had thought it would 
be, when in the morning we had hoisted our small silk flag. We 
had now presumably dogs’ feed and provisions for fifteen to twenty 
days, and thus we might, without fear of losing our time and failing 
in what we had set out to do, put up with the snowstorm which 
now followed. BERTELSEN’s becoming snow blind in his left eye 
caused me, however, a good deal of anxiety, but I hoped it would 
not prevent him making some of his characteristic sketches from 
this Ultima Thule. 
From midnight 6—7/V to noon 7/V nearly calm, in the beginning 
clear, calm air with a cover of clouds 3, stratus; later towards 8 a. m. 
rather hazy and dim. After noon the haze became thicker, and the 
