A DYING PEOPLE. 213 



in by the crack. Here the ice was blue and bright, sometimes in 

 the form of pressed-up rugged young ice, and the dogs hauled as 

 if they meant to go far from this world. We recognized the place 

 again by the hollow of the river, the stones, and snowdrifts, but 

 the ' ski '-staff, which we had put up to mark the exact spot, was 

 gone. I began to dig at the place where I thought the things 

 were buried, while Schei started to look at the stones on the talus. 

 He followed the ice-foot for a little way, and there found the 

 stick. A number of wolf-tracks told how it had come there. It 

 had been well gnawed and was covered with dents, and its upper 

 end had suffered a good deal. How the animals had got it up I 

 cannot think, for I had rammed it well down into the hard-packed 

 snow. They had some trouble in dislodging their prize, I should 

 imagine. 



Luckily I had hit on the exact spot where the things were 

 cached. It did not take long to get them out, carry them down, 

 and place them on the sledges. We then set off again southward, 

 following a stretch of sand which extended a good way beyond 

 the fjord on the north side. 



We halted at noon under a great headland, which we called 

 ' Vakkerkap,' or ' Fair Cape/ on account of its beautiful pure 

 lines. Lofty and precipitous on the east side, and absolutely 

 vertical on the west, it protruded towards the north in a long, 

 sharp point, which cleft the sea-ice like a scythe. 



Schei went mountaineering as usual. A number of stones had 

 fallen down from the cliffs, and had landed on the ice a good way 

 from the shore. They were nearly white, and so porous that big 

 pieces of them could be crushed with the fingers. Schei was in a 

 position to state that they contained gypsum, and that they only 

 required burning to produce the finest plaster of Paris. 



After taking some photographs, we went on again with a course 

 for Blaamanden, steering at first considerably to the south, and 

 thus successfully avoiding the old polar ice which had bothered us 

 so on the trip north. We had first-rate going the whole way. As 

 we approached the east shore we saw a herd of polar oxen up the 

 bay, north of Blaamanden, but we would not stop for them, as we 

 had some observations to take from the south part of that Cape. 



