210 NEW LAND. 



We now cruised fruitlessly about in the sound for several 

 watches. As we wanted to keep in smooth water as much as 

 possible, we sometimes put the ship in through the drift-ice ; and 

 by taking advantage of the places where it was slackest, came so 

 close off Ellesmere Land that we could see there was open water in 

 the fjords, but outside them the ice was as compact as ever all the 

 way along the coast. We were obliged to have steam up the 

 whole while, in order to be able to use the engines when we had to 

 turn, but I soon grew tired of waiting about and burning coal to no 

 purpose, so we tacked a short distance to the east, and sounded 

 our way to a place of anchorage a little west of Cone Island, in a 

 fjord which we called ' Fram Fjord.' 



The fjord ran due north and south, and we anchored in a little 

 bay on the west side of it, a couple of miles from the head of the 

 fjord. A large, fissured glacier covered the bottom of the valley, 

 and fell, blue and green, sheer into the sea, in the large bay outside 

 the fjord. Straight from our place of anchorage stretched a large 

 valley in a westerly direction; it was wide and smiling, and sloped 

 gently upwards, with grass- and moss-grown sides, eventually 

 uniting itself with the chief valley. On the east side of the fjord, 

 on the other hand, the mountains rose precipitously, straight up 

 from the sea. 



This was a fairly sheltered spot for us ; but farther outside it 

 was still blowing hard, a fact of which we were left in no doubt by 

 the storm clouds which, heavy and threatening, came hurrying past. 



As soon as we had anchored, two parties went ashore ; Isachsen, 

 Schei, Bay, .and Simmons up the valley to the west ; Fosheim and 

 I up along the side of the fjord. 



The vegetation here was unusually vigorous, and it was one of 

 the most verdant places I saw on the whole voyage. Wherever we 

 went in this valley, we trod on grass or sank into a soft carpet of 

 moss, and this made us feel sure that there must be plenty of 

 animal life about. 



Close by the place where we landed, we saw vestiges of former 

 habitation, in the shape of tent-rings and fox-traps ; while not many 

 steps up from' the shore we came across reindeer antlers, and the 

 skulls of polar cattle. In the first two or three hundred yards alone, 



