228 NEW LAND. 



The result of shooting hares day after day like this is that in 

 the end one becomes so keen about it that one hardly cares for 

 anything else. We beat them up high and low, early and late, 

 from behind stones, in trackless wastes, and in every imaginable 

 place. I certainly never shot anything up there which afforded 

 me so much enjoyment; and it happened several times that I 

 began to follow a hare in the twilight of dawn, and kept on the 

 track of the same hare almost the whole day. 



Meanwhile, it was not only shooting which occupied our time. 

 We climbed to the top of all the mountains in the neighbourhood, 

 from which we might expect to get a view over the surrounding 

 country, for we were just as anxious to solve the question of what it 

 was like west of us, and how far the fjord penetrated into the land. 

 But, no matter where we went, we never succeeded in climbing to 

 any place where we could get a clear idea of the lie of the land. We 

 saw that about five miles inside of our camping-ground a glacier 

 came down to the fjord, and that the latter here made a bend, but 

 how far it might be to the head of it we were not able to decide. 



When we saw for certain that the boat could not be taken back 

 to the ship that autumn, we set to work to build a house with 

 it. The site we chose was a mound of fairly dry grit, not so hard 

 frozen but that we could hack and dig it with the implements we 

 had at hand, namely, spades and seal-hooks. When we had dug 

 deep enough, we turned the boat over the top to make a roof, and 

 heaped shingle along the sides, and over the whole put a layer of 

 snow a couple of feet deep. The house was about twenty feet long 

 and six feet wide, measured inside, and we could stand upright under 

 the keel. The floor sloped gently upwards, and at the upper end we 

 made a bench in Eskimo fashion, raised about a foot from the ground. 

 The entrance was at the stern of the boat, and a sack, which we 

 split up, made a fine door of double sailcloth. 



The house proved to be so warm that I do not think many 

 houses at home in Norway are warmer. We had meant to put in 

 a ventilating shaft, but we went into residence before we had time 

 to see about it, and afterwards it was entirely forgotten. The 

 ' Primus,' however, did not like our house as well as we did ; 

 as everybody knows, they are asthmatic, and require air, and 



