354 NEW LAND. 



Next morning we got under way at our usual time, keeping 

 at first on the same course, that is to say, straight across the 

 sound ; but what the day before we had thought to be a sound 

 now proved to be only a fjord, and the high mountain we had 

 taken for an island was a top projecting from some low ground of 

 large extent. We then took a line west of this mountain, and kept 

 on the whole of the day as well as we could ; but the going became 

 heavier and heavier, and deeper and deeper the loose layer of snow. 

 Several times I tried driving inshore,, but each time the ice 

 became so bad that we were obliged to give it up and turn outward 

 again. These great plains attracted us and lured us on, and we 

 were eager to find out what they had to offer. Far inland was 

 mountainous country, but adjoining it lay broad plains extending 

 certainly as many as ten or twelve miles to the sea. They were 

 lowlands in good earnest, for it was almost impossible to see 

 where they ended and the sea began. 



After we had passed Store Bjornekap a similar foreland appeared 

 in view in the distance, and this we named ' Lille Bjornekap ' 

 (Little Bear Cape), but whereas the former fell away almost 

 perpendicularly into the sea, there stretched beyond the latter 

 some low-lying land some five or six miles in extent. 



We kept at it the whole day and did well, but all the same we 

 were not able to reach Lille Bjornekap that evening, and camped 

 a little to the south of it. As for the distance we had covered 

 during the day we could only guess at it, as we had broken the 

 rods of both the odometers in the sound, but we put it down at 

 nearly twenty -three miles. 



Once during the course of the day the weather had cleared 

 a little, and we then saw one or two islands to the south-west, 

 which we assumed to be the same as those we had observed from 

 Fourth Camp, though without being certain of it. In a direction 

 approaching the true west was a very large mountain, but whether 

 or not it was connected with King Oscar Land we could not make 

 sure, but thought it improbable that this should be the case. Were it 

 really connected with King Oscar Land this land must extend a very 

 great distance to the west, and in that case it was possibly the same 

 land which Belcher discovered in 1850, and which he named North 



