A STONY LAND. 253 



courage to look back at the monster. Once, and once only, did I 

 see ( Svartflekken ' afraid of another animal, and that was when he 

 measured ground with the reindeer-calf. 



The calf had soon to bite the dust. Schei drove up the two 

 sledges, and the skinning was begun on and soon finished. The 

 dogs had a good feed off the meat, and the remainder we took 

 with us. 



The animals were in very poor condition ; there was not a 

 particle of fat on their bodies, and not very much meat. The skin 

 was the poorest I have ever seen on a reindeer ; we could hardly 

 touch it, and had to handle it with more care than if we were 

 skinning a hare. They were certainly fine specimens of their 

 kind! 



At last we went on southwards, and pitched our tent that 

 evening down on the ice-foot. We fared sumptuously off fillets of 

 reindeer and goose, for we had become so high and mighty by this 

 time that we fried pieces off the breasts of the geese, and boiled 

 the rest for soup. 



As we were driving on south next day, along the ice-foot, 

 we fell on to the tracks of two sledges, and so knew that 

 Fosheim and the mate had gone south. We passed countless 

 small lanes, though they were not so broad that we could not 

 drive across them; one of them, however, sent us up on to the 

 ice-foot. Numbers of seals were lying on the ice, sunning them- 

 selves in the brilliant weather, but we had no time to think about 

 them to-day ; we forged on south to Store Bjornekap as hard as we 

 could go. This was the goal we had set ourselves for the day's 

 march, as we were anxious to see a little more of it. There we 

 meant to be before we camped that day, and there we came, but 

 it was a long way ; we had never thought it would take so long to 

 reach it. 



It was a relief to camp on the dry shingle, and- what was still 

 better was that when we looked a little more closely at this 

 shingle it proved to consist mainly of fossils. This promised well, 

 and we could not resist walking up to the precipitous cliffs. The 

 shore was here a couple of hundred yards wide, and at its upper 

 part was strewn with large fragments of rock, almost all of which 



