404 NEW LAND. 



It was a terrible disappointment to us, this being unable to 

 proceed farther ; but there was nothing else for it. I think we had 

 done all that we and the dogs could do, and that being the case 

 one's self-respect is not shipwrecked, even if the result of the 

 work is not so great as one had expected. 



Early in the morning of May 5, we began to look about for a 

 suitable spot for a cairn, and up on a little knoll, some few 

 hundred yards from the tent, we found a place where there were 

 the necessary materials. We began at once, on the erection. At 

 first it was rather comfortless work in the cold north wind ; but 

 in the afternoon the wind went down, and the mist gave place 

 to brighter weather. By mid-day the sun was so warm, on the 

 dark snow-bare mounds of grit around us, that we could see 

 the flakes of snow melting between the stones. On the top of the 

 cairn we placed a tall stone, in which Fosheim made a hole with a 

 chisel for a flagstaff, which bore the Norwegian flag. We then 

 took a meridian altitude, which, when worked out on the spot, 

 gave a latitude of 80 55' N., and placed under the cairn a 

 record of our journey on the west coast, to which we added the 

 latitude we had observed ; finally we took some photographs of 

 the cairn with its surroundings. 



When the cairn was finished, we went a walk northward, 

 along the shore, to get a view of the place on which we were 

 about to turn our backs, and to try to reach 81 N. 



A little way to the north we came across tracks of hares, 

 and as they led up towards a large expanse of stony ground, 

 Fosheim followed them, to try and get a hare or two 'for supper. 

 I continued northward along the shore, and came to a sheltered 

 little creek, where I discovered the tracks of seven or eight rein- 

 deer, leading towards the northernmost fjord, which penetrated 

 the land from the head of the big bay. I trudged on northward, 

 however, and after a while came across Fosheim, who had shot a 

 hare the only game we had seen since we left ' Bjorneleiren ' 

 (Bear Camp). 



Some miles from the cairn, we went out on to a rather loner 



o 



spit of land, and saw thence that the land continued in almost 

 the same direction as before that is to say, about north by east ; 





