SHERARD OSBORNE FJORD 



tinue inward at once, but this has to be given up, as Koch is so 

 exhausted after several days of diarrho ea that he has to rest; 

 furthermore, Ajako has gone snow-blind. Thus the distance 

 covered during the day is only 10 kilometres; but then, the 

 dogs were unusually slack and weak. The only encouragement 

 the day had to offer us was the trail of a lemming, which showed 

 that this strong and obstinate little animal had set out on a 

 journey which was to take it from one coast of the wide fjord to 

 the other. 



May 23rd. — At one o'clock in the night Koch and I. 

 respectively on snowshoes and skis, begin our toilsome walk 

 through deep snow in towards Cape Buttress, which stands as a 

 mighty signboard on the point where the fjord contracts into 

 a narrow channel, from which it widens out again to a great 

 breadth. Ajako, who is now perfectly snow-blind, has to be 

 left in the tent. The journey is very strenuous and takes us 

 fourteen hours, but it is with interesting results that we return. 

 Sherard Osborne Fjord was marked on the map as the largest 

 of all fjords, as Cape Buttress formed merely the half-way point 

 to the inner widening which contracted here, and later on, in 

 the full breadth of its mouth, swung slightly towards south- 

 west up towards the white inland-ice. 



Cape Buttress is a wild and monumental complex of high 

 mountains, the summits of which are covered by a glacier, 

 gigantic and brilliant with red hues, blossoming out under the 

 rays of the sun. 



We had followed the coast on the western side rather close 

 to land, and every time we looked eastward we saw a low cloud- 

 like brim which often covered the lower part of the shore. It 

 was like a small bank of fog which, white and trembling, 

 encircled the feet of the mountains. Only when we arrived 

 quite close to the great cape towards which we made our course 

 did we come suddenly out on the fog-bank itself, and we now 

 discovered that the mystery was low-floating inland-ice, reach- 

 ing right down to Cape Gray on Castle Island. This floating 

 inland-ice, which further out raises itself only a couple of metres 

 above the old Sikiissaq ice, mounts quite evenly inward where, 



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