138 NEW LAND. 



I told Fosheim and Peder to take their guns and a couple of 

 dogs, and follow the animals. Meanwhile Baumann began to put 

 the camp in order. 



After a while they came back, having done nothing. The dogs 

 had not got scent of the oxen, and the latter had moved so far 

 away that it was too late to follow them farther that day. 



While Fosheim and I sallied forth next morning in pursuit of 

 game, Peder and Baumann stayed in camp to try and get rid of 

 some of the ice on our things. The inner tent was to be hung up 

 to dry, and the bags were to be turned inside out and laid in the sun. 

 It was true the thermometer was at 58 Fahr. ( 50 Cent.), 

 but in clear, calm weather the sun can yet work miracles, even at 

 such a low temperature as this. When everything had been hung 

 out to dry they also were going a turn inland. 



Fosheim and I took our way up the bay, turning eastward 

 towards a hill whither the animals had gone the previous evening. 

 This hill did not seem to be of great circumference from a 

 distance it looked like an enormous, roundish, chopping-block, 

 and we decided to go round it. 



We saw a great number of hare-tracks, and for that matter the 

 hares themselves. They sat round in the rocks sunning them- 

 selves, and appeared to be thoroughly enjoying existence. But we 

 had something else to do besides shooting hares, and passed one 

 after another without disturbing their Arcadian peace. 



We walked south of the hill, but when we had gone some way 

 east of it without seeing a single track of the kind we wanted, we 

 started up the hill itself. Its shape was a curious one. It may 

 have been a couple of miles long, a mile broad, and 1000 feet 

 high. It stood absolutely alone in the midst of a plain which 

 was so level that the hill itself looked like an island. It was 

 steep, however ; so steep that only in a few places was it access- 

 ible to human beings. We climbed to the very top, hoping to get 

 a really good view northward. 



A little east of us a large fjord cut into the land, in a northerly 

 direction. Of its breadth we could not form any clear idea, as the 

 mountains on each side overlapped, as it were, but judging from 

 them it must have been of great length. 



