98 EJNAR MIKKELSEN. 
Finally, a point of great importance, they would, by choosing the 
coast route, have the advantage of moving over familiar ground, and 
there would also be a possibility of meeting the relief-expedition, which 
they expected would be sent out from the ship. 
Nevertheless, when they left the summer-camp, it was doubtless 
MYLIUS-ERICHSEN'S intention to sledge home over the Inlandice, induced 
thereto by the prospect of making a start as soon as they had found 
sufficient game. Provided the winter-ice in Danmark’s Fjord still held 
— and there was no reason for supposing otherwise — they would be 
able to sledge over this and on the new ice formed over thawholes and 
cracks, at a time when the coast would still be quite open. 
This plan, however, was abandoned during their many days’ stay 
on the ice, and when they left their depot at Cape Kronborg, it was 
in all probability with the intention of proceeding homewards along the 
coast, as it would otherwise have meant a considerable amount of extra 
work to fetch their gear from there: they could not possibly say how 
far they might have to go on into Danmark’s Fjord before finding game. 
The unexpected rise in the temperature and the still more unexpected 
breaking up of the ice, which left them face to face with open water 
stretching from one coast to the other, led them to decide on the safer 
route along the coast, and even if they had still wished to go overland, 
this would have been impossible, for a somewhat peculiar reason. My- 
LIUS-ERICHSEN writes in report found on Ulvebakkerne: 
77 
1 dee further mm SL nob ee 
It would only be natural to suppose that the young ice would 
quicker get solid farther up in the comparatively narrow fjord, where 
it would not be exposed to very heavy pressure, than out towards the 
open sea, where shifting winds and currents would keep the ice in motion, 
long after it had become firm and solid im closed waters and narrow 
fjords. That the ice, as seen from Ulvebakkerne, should appear safer 
to the north than farther southwards can scarcely have been other 
than an accidental circumstance, a circumstance, however, to which 
they attached the greatest importance, coinciding as it did with their 
own wish to find some reason, which they themselves could deem suffi- 
cient to warrant thus relinquishing their original plan of crossing the 
Inlandice. 
On the 12th of September, they started from Ulvebakkerne, at 
81°25’ N. on their homeward journey, according to MYLIUS-ERICHSEN'S 
report under favourable conditions. He writes: 
“HAGEN, BRONLUND and undersigned — all well — leave to-day this 
“place, called “Ulvebakkerne” with one sledge and seven dogs, to begin 
“our return journey to the ship on the new ice, which has to-day at 
“last become safe .... The ice further in still not safe, otherwise had 
“considered the possibility of returning via the Inlandice from the head of 
