The Journal of a Sporting Nomad 
as they were afraid that the pressure of the ice 
that hemmed her in would crack her sides, and 
excavating a hole about five feet deep in the 
soil, covered it over by way of a roof with drift- 
wood and the mainsail of their boat. This party 
originally consisted of three men. The captain, 
who was also a Norwegian, died of that fearful 
scourge, scurvy. This sad event happened in 
midwinter, when they could no longer dig a 
hole in the ground owing to the fact that the 
frosts, which in these months touch 80° below 
zero, made such an operation impossible. They 
therefore had recourse to putting the corpse 
into two barrels, the legs into one and the trunk 
into another, nailing canvas over the place 
where the barrels joined, then piling drift-wood 
over all, to keep off polar bears and foxes. It 
was a melancholy task we had to perform in 
burying this man, his body was still frozen 
solid, and the ravages of the disease made him 
look dreadfully emaciated, but otherwise he 
looked as though he had died but the previous 
day. 
In the photograph here reproduced the scene 
is depicted exactly as we found them. The 
surviving Norwegian was still suffering from 
scurvy, looking desperately ill. He was, how- 
ever, able to walk about, although very weak. 
In a few days, after being well fed and cared 
for on board our steamer, one would not have 
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