418 I. P. Косн. 
are still free of water, become loose, so that one sinks through them 
into the slush; only in the earliest morning hours, after the night 
cold has formed a more solid crust of ice, is one with tolerable ease 
able to get along on skis. 
Sledge journeys out on the fjords are now extremely difficult. 
The greater part of the twenty-four hours it is hardly possibly to 
make progress, because the sledges stick, and the snow cannot bear 
the dogs. The camping site must be lined with skis, in order to 
prevent the tent from sinking into the slush, and from the sledges 
one must make a platform in front of the tent door, so as to be 
able at least to get out of the tent without immediately getting wet. 
Under such conditions it is generally preferable to try to get in 
under the land in the wind-swept area, or on the ice foot, even 
though it thus becomes necessary to make a considerable detour. 
Under the land one is often rid of the snow slush, but other, 
though minor inconveniences are encountered. 
In the tidal cracks the snow has melted; at low water they form 
ditches, deep and difficult to pass, and at high water they are filled 
with water, so that along the coast a complete system of channels 
is developed, which on long stretches may be quite impassable. 
Along the shore, where there has been no protecting layer of 
snow, the melting of the smooth ice is already so far advanced that 
in many places there is water on it; generally the depth of these 
lakes on the ice is, however, still quite trifling, and it does not 
prevent sledging. 
Also on the ice foot the melting is in full progress. The old 
tidal cracks, which for months have lain dormant, now again be- 
come active, on account of the melting-off from below. The tide 
circulates in the latter, and so the ice foot becomes shrunken in 
breadth. The often rather considerable quantity of snow, which in 
the course of the winter has been deposited on the ice foot is now 
melting rapidly. Along the depressions in the rather uneven surface 
of the ice foot small lakes of melting water have formed; in other 
places the layer of snow has totally disappeared, and on the bare 
ice one sees the often quite considerable quantities of pebbles and 
gravel, which the winter storms have carried across it together with 
the drifting snow. 
During the latter half of June the rivers break up and send a 
flood of water out across the ice. The water of the rivers, the 
temperature of which rises to several degrees above zero, greatly 
furthers the melting of the ice, and soon there is in front of every 
river mouth a smaller or larger lake with quite open water, which 
quickly spreads over larger areas. Particularly in the interiors of 
