276 NEW LAND. 



still very heavy, for we dared not leave anything behind, as we 

 could not count on returning the same way. But up the fjord 

 the snow became better, and we then made very fair daily 

 marches, when bad pressure-ice did not put too great obstacles in 

 our way. 



Of the ice in these parts my diary gives the following details. 

 The whole of the sea round the great promontory, as far as the 

 eye could reach, was covered with rubble ice of this year, with 

 spaces between filled with large rugged floes of old ice, and of 

 a mass of icebergs, large and small, which lay strewn about in all 

 directions. The greatest number of these were from the western 

 extremity of the point to four or five miles south of it. Here 

 they stood like gigantic Eunic stones, ten or fifteen of them 

 in a line, a mighty fence shutting off the ice outside. All these 

 giants were evidently grounded. The tidal crack here was four or 

 five feet. 



May 7. To-day at four we were awakened by short barks 

 from ' Susamel,' afterwards seconded by the other dogs, which 

 were tied up just outside the tent. Creeping on all-fours, I poked 

 my head out, and saw by following the direction of the dogs' 

 glances that there was a herd of polar oxen on a hill straight up 

 ashore, about six hundred yards from the crack. I set off forthwith, 

 gun in hand, while the mate was to loose the dogs at a given 

 signal. Just before I came within tolerable range of the animals 

 I had to cross some absolutely open country, and the consequence 

 of this was that the whole herd made off up the hillside, on the 

 crest of which they pulled up and formed into square. I dropped 

 an old bull with a bullet in the head at sixty or seventy yards, 

 whereupon the others all set off again up the ridge, the snow 

 spinning up into the air behind them, and their long hair flapping 

 like cloaks in the wind. After I had dropped the second animal 

 I meant to stop, for with two of them we had more than enough 

 meat for our present wants, but unluckily it proved that a third 

 animal had been so badly wounded that I was constrained to give 

 it another bullet. 



During this battle both the game and the shooter of it had 

 disappeared across the ridge, so that the mate could not watch the 



