190 NEW LAND. 



the ice iu the outer part of Hayes Sound. They only got back to 

 the ship by the skin of their teeth, and had nearly lost their 

 sounding-line and sledge, as all their tackle had got adrift out in 

 the sound. The trip had been a very comfortless one ; they had 

 been wading day after day up to their belts in icy cold water. 



A couple of days later Baumann, Fosheim, and I, started for 

 the southern part of Eice Strait, to dig out some ruins which 

 Baumann had discovered some time before, and which he had 

 already partially investigated. 



It was a fine clear evening as we rowed out through the strait. 

 After we had landed and beached the boat, we walked across the 

 mountains down to Leffert Glacier. From the watershed we had a 

 splendid view over Smith Sound and its surroundings. Twenty 

 miles away we could see Greenland ; first the rocks and precipices 

 of the fore-land, black and bare ; and behind them, mile after mile, 

 the glaciers and snowfields of the 'inland ice,' looking like low 

 white clouds. Smith Sound was practically free of ice ; there were 

 only a couple of icebergs to be seen drifting hither and thither. 

 But just off Eice Strait was still a belt of fast ice, which would 

 prevent the ship from getting out, though it was so narrow that 

 it could not last for very many days. 



We rested a little while up there, had our supper, made some 

 coffee and took photographs. We then went down to the glacier, 

 towards the outermost point of land, and so reached the ruins of 

 some winter huts and tent-rings left by the Eskimo. 



We found also three graves which were situated in the mountain- 

 side, only some fifteen feet from the huts. The whole of the rock 

 formation here looked as if Providence had intended it for a 

 mortuary chapel. The water had at one time or another hollowed 

 out the limestone in such a manner that an entire row of holes or 

 vaults had been formed, with the broad side outwards, and the rock, 

 as it were, hanging out over them. They were six to seven feet 

 long, two to three feet high, and fully two feet in depth. The 

 graves were quite dry, and in the worst weather no water could 

 have penetrated to the bodies within them. In two places stones 

 had been piled up to prevent the entrance of animals, but they had 

 fallen down so that foxes, at any rate, could now enter. One body 



