Report ‘on the expedition. 121 
on the ice, so that our only chance was to get one in the water. On 
July 26th we saw one seal, on July 27th three and on July 28th none 
at all. We ate our last bread and had now nothing left except pem- 
mican and tea. 
I went out on the ice on July 29th and shot a seal in the water, 
but it sank, before I could get hold of it. 
We saw one seal on July 30th, but it escaped easily, as we had 
no means of following it into the water. New ice formed for the first 
time on the tidal crack, and the temperature had been as low as 
— 3°5 during the night. 
We saw no seals on July 3156 and August Ist, but we saw three 
on August 2nd, and four on August 5rd. The seals were however very 
wary and kept so far away that we could not reach them with our guns. 
We had realized long ago that we could not expect to get any game 
here, except by the merest chance, and we had decided to leave Hov- 
gaard Island and try to reach Schnauder Island, while we still had 
some provisions left, but foggy weather delayed our departure. 
On August 4th we shot one seal in the tidal crack, and although 
it sank at once, we hoped to be able to get it, as we had good marks 
on the place where it disappeared, and the depth of the water did not 
exceed 3 metres. 
The whole of August 5th we spent in dragging for the seal with a 
rather good drag manufactured out of the handles of the kerosene- 
tanks. We used a small piece of ice as a raft, but after having worked 
in vain for seventeen hours we gave up the attempt. The seal must 
have been carried away by the current, which runs along the coast with 
great speed — northward with the flood, southward with the ebb. 
At last we left Hovgaard Island on August 6th after a stay of nineteen 
days, during which period we had done all that we possibly could do to secure 
game. We had tracked the land carefully and only got two ptarmigans, 
and we had been at the tidal cracks night and day, with the result that 
the seals we shot sank at once and drifted beyond our reach. We had 
lost one dog and eaten such a large amount of our provisions that we 
had now only 4 kg pemmican left — nothing else, save food for our 
2 dogs in 8 days. 
The cold weather, which we had had while on Hovgaard Island un- 
fortunately changed to warm weather on the very day, when our sledging 
was resumed. This melted the ice, which had frozen so thick during 
the cold weather that it could carry a man, and our sledging south- 
ward was consequently very much delayed. 
We did not break camp on August 7th, as I had sprained my right 
foot on August 5th while looking for the seal, and it was now so swollen 
that I could not get on my kamicks. During the day my foot became 
much better, so we started during the first hour of August 8th and 
made splendid progress over old ice, bare of snow and quite smooth, 
