108 EJNAR MIKKELSEN. 
the distance we had deemed the best for crossing the peninsula, we were 
stopped by a water-lane, 5 à 7 metres broad, which separated the sea-ice 
from the Inlandice. We headed north along this lane and noticed, for 
the first time, melting-water around the larger iceblocks and water on 
the ice underneath the snow. Before long a place was found, where 
ice drifted together had formed a somewhat passable bridge, over which 
we reached the Inlandice. The surface was smooth, the snow rather 
hard and the incline so small that we had only attained a height of 20 
metres, 1 mile from the edge of the Inlandice, when progress was stopped 
by the snowlayer bursting underneath us. The sledge, IVERSEN, myself 
and one dog felt into the crevasse, but the sledge fortunately became 
wedged so that we could crawl out, and only a few articles were lost. 
The crevasse was 4 å 5 metres broad and about 20 metres deep, and its 
bottom consisted of quite level sea-ice bare of snow. It took us a couple 
of hours to save our sledge, and we did not continue sledging till 
11 p.m. (Fig. 56). 
The whole of the night of June 5th was spent in getting away from 
the Inlandice, as progress on it appeared almost impossible because of 
the numerous crevasses and river-courses, which were rarely separated 
from each other by so much as 30 metres. The weather was at the 
same time foggy and cloudy, and when it later on began to snow, it 
was impossible to see even the largest undulations, before we tumbled 
over or into them (Fig. 57). 
We tried to let our dogs take the lead, but they too became nervous, 
as they frequently fell into deep holes, and it was not till we found a way 
of pushing our sledgemast ahead of us, thus forming a small, but quite 
visible furrow in the snow, that we could go ahead, and even then only 
very slowly. The whip-lash was tied to the other end of the mast, and 
whenever we came to a river-course, we determined its grade and depth 
by swinging the mast, just like a fishrod, and dropping the whip and 
handle (7 metres long) into the river-course. Thus we formed a black 
line across the snow and could see whether the grade was too steep or 
the river-course too deep for the sledge. It was, however, too tiring 
to make real progress in that way, and we had to stop at 4 а. т., as we 
came to a river-course, so steep and deep that the whip-handle could not 
reach the bottom and was suspended almost vertically. 
We were surprised to find that the snow which fell on the sledge 
and later on the tent melted, although the temperature was — 3° С. 
On June 6th at 5a.m. we were able to continue. The weather was 
fair, and almost immediately we got splendid going, ice which was quite 
smooth without crevasses or river-courses. We headed straight for the 
high mountain, Nakkehoved, and at 7 a.m. we passed a water-lane, similar 
to the one crossed when ascending the Inlandice. We had about 1 mile 
of sea-ice, till the next lane was passed, which like the other lanes’ we 
had passed formed the line of demarkation between sea-ice and Inlandice. 
