Report on the expedition. 39 
I am sure that some of our dogs would have died of exhaustion, the 
primary reason of which was the weakness arising from continual inter- 
course with the bitches. 
We found a surprising amount of bear traces in this vicinity and 
saw no less than nine different lairs. In the case of four of the nine 
lairs it was quite plain that the bear had gone into a cave in an iceberg 
and allowed the entrance to be snowed up, and that it had later on broken 
out through as much as four feet of snow. In two other cases it was 
evident that the bear had dug down into the snow to a very considerable 
depth and slept there, but in the remainder of the cases the holes were 
probably dug in order to get hold of a seal, as we noticed a place just 
near it, where the snow was dyed with blood. 
On March 18th we had advanced as far as Carl Heger Island, where 
our progress was stopped by apparently floating inlandice, which filled 
up the sound between the island and the main land and all along the 
coast of Edward Island. We looked down upon it from an elevation 
of 175 metres and could not detect a single level spot. Farther on, 
beyond this floating inlandice or — and this was more likely — icebergs 
stopped on a shoal and drifted together, we detected a perfectly level 
stretch of bay-ice without a single iceberg, going all the way to the 
glacier front. The Inlandice was also in plain view, and there seemed 
to be quite a level and smooth stretch of ice reaching from the middle 
of Bredebræ towards the WNW (true). To the north and south of this 
level ice, which appeared as a broad road, the ice was very rugged, full 
of hummocks and intersected by crevasses. 
On March 19th Laus and I went out to try to find a passable 
road through this belt of icebergs, leaving the three others to bring up 
the rest of our provisions. We found a road, which was if not good then 
at least passable, and over which we took our stores in two turns on 
March 20th. 
We found a very narrow streak of good, level ice close under the 
main land and made good progress over it, and on March 22nd we reached 
a place just in front of the glacier, where we stopped in order to find 
the best place to ascend. 
We climbed a rocky point on the main land projecting into the 
Inlandice, and from the height of 125 metres the conditions of the 
surface of the Inlandice could be seen far toward Dronning Louise’s 
Land and to the north. 
We noticed a rather level stretch of Inlandice connecting Dronning 
Louise’s Land with the coast, and this level ice followed the east coast 
of the land as far as the northern horizon, apparently with a very small 
rise. This level ice was sharply bordered on either side by extremely 
rough ice, which was also intersected by cracks, and it almost had the 
appearance of a broad river, winding its way between the rough ice to 
the coast. 
