CONE ISLAND. 411 



weather bad, with thick fog and falling snow, but all the same, 

 they reached Cone Island in the afternoon of April 8, and camped 

 on the south-west corner of the island. The island is excessively 

 steep on all sides. Towards the south-west, however, a rather 

 low point of land jutted out, and on this were fox-traps and 

 tent-rings. 



On the top of a rock about fifty feet in height, connected with 

 Cone Island by a low isthmus, was a cairn, probably set up by 

 Sherard Osborn in the fifties. They examined it carefully, but 

 found no record in it. The following day Fosheim and Hassel 

 built a new cairn at the same place, but somewhat higher than 

 the former one. Meanwhile, Isachsen went for a walk, and shoe 

 a big bear in the sound between Cone and Smith Islands. Either 

 for shelter from the weather, or in order to steal unawares on a 

 seal, it had burrowed a hole in a hollow where it could lie abso- 

 lutely hidden, with its head clear of the drift for the sake of 

 the view. 



While Isachsen and Hassel skinned and cut up the bear, 

 Fosheim put up a bar with a black ball at the top, and a rotating 

 flag of iron tin, on which was the following inscription : ' Cone 

 Island, April, 1902, "Fram," 76 39' N.Br., 88 59' L.W.' In the 

 cairn, at the foot of the bar, he put his spectacle-case, con- 

 taining Isachsen's visiting card, on which were written the 

 names of the other members of the expedition, and the ' Fram's ' 

 bearings. 



It was not until April 10 that the weather cleared, and they 

 were able to take the necessary observations ; they started home- 

 wards the following day, taking with them specimens of the 

 Archaean rock. On the return journey they put up the fourth cairn 

 at the southern point of Skreia, and the fifth at Stormkap, where 

 the Eskimo tent-rings provided most of the building materials. 

 The cairn was put up in a very prominent position, on an isolated 

 crag on the west side of the cape. The party were on board again 

 on April 18. 



