390 XEW LAND. 



requisites, ammunition, and reserve material for harness and traces. 

 We could by no means afford to lose things of the kind, so, after 

 supper, Fosheim took a team and drove back, returning about 

 eleven with the bag, in good condition. 



Next day the wind had veered round to the south, and we now 

 had it from that quarter for a change, with a heavy fall of snow. 

 Had the snow been loose before, it now reached the culminating 

 point of looseness. As a rule, the dogs sank into it to their bellies, 

 but also often halfway up their flanks. One cannot expect to get 

 along very fast when half a hundred legs sink, at every step, into 

 snow as loose as flour. The. sledges, too, rode exceedingly heavily 

 and sluggishly. They trembled in all their woodwork as we 

 bumped along, and the very plates of aluminium under the cross- 

 pieces creaked and wailed in distress. But the most remarkable 

 thing of all was that even our ' ski ' would not glide ; the snow 

 caked under them almost as it does in a thaw, and we could not 

 use them in good Christian fashion, but had to stump along on 

 them as one does on ' truger,' or Norwegian snow-shoes. 



We decided to lighten the loads by leaving behind some of the 

 dog-food, as we thought it was beginning to seem as if we might 

 come back the same way. We had hoped all the time that we 

 should reach the northern end of this land, which we took to be a 

 large island, and that it would lead us eastward and then south 

 along the east coast, finally bringing us down to some place on 

 ' Norskebugten ' (Norwegian Bay), but we now gradually began 

 to give up this idea ; it was not likely we should be able to hold 

 out for so long. 



We drove across a bay, which was probably some three miles 

 broad, and which, towards the north, was closed in by a high, 

 straight wall of rock falling sheer into the sea. Here we 

 deposited two tins of dog-food of 108 rations each. We carried 

 them a few hundred yards up from the sea-ice, placed them .on the 

 top of a stone, covered them with sand, and raised a pyramid of over- 

 runners a little way above the crack. To prevent the pyramid 

 from being blown down by storms, we carried some stones to it 

 and piled them up round it. 



This pyramid we made, of course, to enable us to find the place' 



