212 NEW LAND. 



Have they migrated southward to milder regions ? Or did they 

 fight out a hopeless struggle against the cold and the crushing 

 darkness of the winter night, until they all succumbed to the 

 great enemy who knows no mercy ? 



It is a strange feeling of forlornness and barrenness which 

 seizes upon one as one looks at all these ruins, ruins which tell 

 of the human beings who lived here, and had their joys and 

 sorrows like ourselves. Out here on the spits of land the air of 

 the still, clear, summer evenings echoed to the careless laughter of 

 these children of nature, and to the happy shouts of childhood. 

 When autumn came, and the darkness was upon them, they 

 mayhap withdrew with their well-husbanded summer catches to 

 some sheltered spot, where were their winter houses, and there 

 most likely lived out a languishing existence. In their miserable 

 huts they waited patiently for the sun again to shed its light on 

 the lofty peaks. Then they reawoke to life and action in the 

 gladness of summer though, who can tell, in many a hut, 

 perhaps, where the winter store fell short, every human voice was 

 dumb ! 



Week after week, month after month, we drove about up here, 

 and never met with a single living thing, except wild animals. 

 But any one travelling here in former times might have found 

 people who lived and had their homes for always in this wilderness. 

 It seemed to us almost incredible. 



We made an excursion inland, and collected plants and 

 geological specimens. The point we had examined projected from 

 some rather extensive lowlands, which rose at an. even incline 

 towards the mountains in the distance for some way westward, 

 along the coast, to the inner part of the big bay west of us. We 

 were strengthened in our former supposition that the land to the 

 north was an island, but we did not feel certain of it this time 

 either. 



Next morning, May 16, we set off in fine weather, and on 

 snow which became better and better the farther south we went. 



Three miles or so south of Skrallingodden we had to pick up 

 our cache of dog-food and paraffin, and we accordingly drove close 



