SPRING JOURNEYS, 1901. 151 



from Storsjoen joined the river from the valley in the south we 

 said farewell to Isachsen and Hassel, who then went across to 

 Nbrdstrand. We took our old way north, along Storsjoen, and 

 came down on to the sea-ice north of Nordstrand, pitching our 

 tents in the evening by the ice-foot. 



Very soon after supper we heard the dogs giving tongue, and 

 knew that there must be a bear about. As we were an en- 

 campment of three different tents, of which Baumann and 

 Peder's was the last, and it was from this direction we heard 

 the bear, they, of course, were entitled to the first shot. We 

 therefore contented ourselves by peering out at our tent-door, 

 and saw them crawling forth from theirs. Not long afterwards 

 we heard a shot, and all hands, except myself, turned out and 

 skinned the bear, fed the dogs to repletion, and cached the skin 

 in a snowdrift, where it was to remain until Baumann and Peder 

 drove south again. 



The following day we pushed on north-eastward along shore ; 

 and on the evening of the third day after our departure camped 

 under the precipitous cliff on the south-west side of Eidsfjord. We 

 stopped rather early in the day, as there were several things we 

 wanted to do, one of them being the attaching of the wooden over- 

 runners to the sledges, which had begun to travel badly. We 

 also had to deposit seventy-two rations of dog-food in the inner 

 part of Eidsfjord, and this among other things necessitated some 

 soldering. 



We could see the whirling of the snow- clouds in the inner 

 part of Eidsfjord, and it made us feel all the more comfortable 

 under the lee of our high mountain. While we were soldering 

 the boxes a bear came jogging straight up towards us. Its late 

 arrival was decidedly annoying, for had it come sooner we could 

 have saved a meal of dog-food. However, as things turned out, 

 it was our annoyance which might have been saved, and not the 

 meal, for just as we were remarking on it ' Bamsen ' got wind of 

 us, and set off as fast as he could go, kicking up the snow in a 

 cloud behind him. 



When we turned out at four o'clock next morning it was 

 blowing hard straight down the fjord. With such a wind out 



