SCHEI'S NARRATIVE. . 479 



with me straight towards it, and apparently it did not at first 

 notice the movement, for it continued to stand quite still. When 

 at last it moved off' I stopped and shot it. 



' This was a deed of mercy rather than anything else, for life 

 had probably been a burden to the poor animal of late. Solitary, 

 it had dragged out a melancholy existence ; and its last meal had 

 consisted as much of earth as of lichen, leaves, willow-twigs, and 

 the like. 



' With the greater part of the meat on my back, besides other 

 heavy things in the shape of my gun, hammer, and divers stones, 

 I had a heavy march home to camp. The drifting snow had 

 obliterated my tracks of the morning, and I had to keep my 

 course by the direction of the wind. When I got back, Hendriksen 

 was walking to and fro in front of the tent thinking, he said, that 

 I should lose myself. 



' But again the sun shone warmly, it was calm, and thirteen 

 below zero promised us a good driving day. Our way led across 

 level country to a valley, where I expected to find a pass, which 

 would bring us across to the north side of the island. 



' From a landscape point of view Graham Island is a tableland, 

 averaging centrally 1200 to 1500 feet, and is surrounded by a 

 sharply defined belt of low level country. Speaking generally, the 

 tableland is of even surface, but in detail its evenness is broken 

 by the troughs of torrents and by low but abrupt step-like 

 precipices. Short deep valleys intersect the edge of the table- 

 land and cross the level country to the sea. It is up a valley 

 such as these that is reached, at its upper part, the flat depression 

 where the river or stream takes its source from the afflux of water 

 in the clayey rock-bed. 



' On the one side the depression borders on ground covered with 

 low debris leading up like a step to a sloping plateau ; on the other 

 a slight incline soon brings one to the edge of a similar stony slope, 

 whence step-like plains lead downwards, in sinking ground, to the 

 last expanse of stony ground with its fall of as much as a thousand 

 feet, which forms the boundary of the level country surrounding 

 the tableland. These screes or stone-strewn slopes face south-east, 

 while the plains sink towards the north-west. 



