SHERARD OSBORNE FJORD 



sist of cold, creaking snow. The nearest musk-oxen are being 

 dragged down and the dogs have a meal so substantial that they 

 lie down with big, balloon? stomachs, groaning and ovcrgorged, 

 dreaming of the time when there was nothing called expeditions. 

 We men sink into the same materialistic state, but with the 

 difference that we carefully select all the delicious morsels which 

 constitute the chief relish of an Eskimo hunter after a successful 

 catch. Of the killed animals, fourteen are cows and eleven 

 bulls. Round the hearts and kidneys of the oxen we find not a 

 little fat, and also in the hollows of their eyes there are large 

 adipose deposits; this we eat with a specially keen appetite, for 

 the meat we have lived on hitherto has been very lean, and in 

 these regions one's craving for fat is greater than in other places. 



The days are raw and cold in the valley, and, although the 

 temperature registered is only between 10 and 12 degrees of 

 frost (Cent.), the wind is unpleasant. There is an incessant 

 drift of sand and stone, and when we go out for meat, our coats 

 are covered with dirty, sandy snow, which sticks between the 

 hairs and is almost impossible to shake off. We therefore 

 decide as far as possible to remain in the tents, where we spend 

 a pleasant day munching. 



May 15th. — The 15th of May is uncommonly raw and 

 windy. We bring the last carcases down to the tent, and make 

 ready to go down on the ocean-ice again, where there is more 

 shelter and more warmth from the sun than in these windy 

 quarters. 



A couple of the large animals, which were deposited near 

 a mountain from which transport was particularly difficult, were 

 fetched immediately before we moved. On this trip we found 

 behind a big stone a dead musk-ox which strikingly illustrated 

 animal life up here. The musk-ox was a young animal ; it had 

 been pursued by a wolf, and in its fear of its deadly enemy it 

 forgot to use its eyes and got its legs squeezed in between two 

 large stones. In this helpless position it was an easy prey for 

 the wolf. With one single snap the thick gristly throat was 

 ripped up, and the rent, as if cut with a blade, went straight 

 downwards through the chest to the diaphragm, which had been 



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