428 NEW LAND. 



during the night and was heavy going ; on the whole it was the 

 most remarkable kind of snow I had ever come across, and 

 that is saying not a little. It balled under German silver ; and if 

 we stopped for even a moment, we found on starting again that it 

 had caked to such an extent under the runners, that we had to 

 haul the sledges for a long distance with the snow still sticking 

 to the plates. Even when it fell away, the sledges travelled so 

 heavily that I was hardly able to move mine from the spot, 

 although the baggage on it was of no weight. 



When we had crossed Gaasefjord and reached the eastern cape, 

 we saw that the whole mass of the ice outside the crack was in drift. 

 There were large lanes between the floes, and in them were such 

 myriads of birds, particularly black guillemots and little auks, 

 that the sea was quite black. Almost every opening all the way 

 across the ice was bubbling from them like water boiling in a 

 caldron. 



We arrived at Bjorneborg about half-past ten in the forenoon, 

 and really caught the Commandant before he was up. The watch- 

 dog, ' Bjorneborgsvagta,' did his duty : our dogs down by the 

 crack, of course, responded, and the usual uproar ensued. 



The Commandant came running out of his tent, more or less 

 quickly, half asleep and wholly bewildered, thinking it was a bear. 

 When he saw us his face beamed with delight, though to call such 

 a thing a face is somewhat of a misnomer. The whole of the bare 

 patch exposed to our view was covered with a thick layer of dirt, of 

 an uncertain greyish blue-black colour, with a few lighter oases 

 where the grime was peeling off. In the midst of this desert of dirt 

 shone Bay's merry kind-hearted eyes, looking like small suns. The 

 colour of his hands was more that of a negro than of any other species 

 of humanity. I do not wish to imply, by this criticism of another, 

 that we ourselves had much to boast of; in all probability we 

 looked much worse than he did, but in our case it was a hue 

 honestly acquired by the sweat of our brows. We had gone 

 through a spring season of such bad weather as I have never 

 experienced before or since, and from being constantly frozen, the 

 skin of our faces had become as thick and stiff as bark ; it actually 

 hurt us to laugh or even smile. Just now, the weather being 



