LIFE AND HISTORY OF THE ESKIMOS 



from the inland-ice with great suddenness and in an instant 

 produces a positive temperature in the middle of the coldest 

 winter. I will give an example : 



Once, at the end of January, after a journey across Melville 

 Bay, we drove in a party of twenty sledges along the land south 

 of the Petowik Glacier on our way to Thule. The weather was 

 good, and as the day's journey consequently had been a very 

 long one, I felt somewhat tired and stretched myself on the 

 sledge to take a little nap, whilst a boy who accompanied me 

 drove the dogs. Just before my eyes closed I noticed a swirl 

 above some doughs near the inland-ice, but as there were no 

 other signs of bad weather on the sky, none of us paid any 

 particular attention to it. 



My doze could not have lasted more than five minutes when 

 I was awakened in the most brutal manner, being, as by a 

 mighty grip, lifted up from the sledge and flung out on the ice. 

 I received so violent a blow in the back that I was unable to get 

 up for a moment, but when at last I succeeded in rising to my 

 knees, I saw that all the many sledges which a moment ago 

 had driven in a long string one behind the other, were swept 

 together into one huge pile, like wooden shavings blown to- 

 gether by a breath of wind. With such suddenness and force 

 the Fd/m-wind had sent out its first squalls as forerunners of 

 the storm which was coming. As it was quite impossible to 

 stand upright, not to mention driving, we let ourselves be blown 

 up on land with sledges and dogs, until we found some little 

 shelter in a clough by a broad tongue of ice where the sledges 

 could be anchored and the dogs tethered. Hardly was this done 

 when the Fohn, with the roar of a hurricane, swept down upon 

 us from the mountains and the inland-ice and made us suspect 

 that the world itself was going under. It pressed its enormous 

 weight down on the thick winter ice with such violence that the 

 waves immediately burst up through the belt of the tidal waters. 

 Half an hour later we saw through the darkness huge fissures in 

 the ice, frothing white, and a few hours after the outbreak there 

 was open sea where shortly before we had driven our sledges. 



Altogether, one can understand the important role played 



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