NORDENSKJOLD FJORD 



pendence Fjord. We can find neither the road nor the pro- 

 vision for this purpose. 



As soon as Chip Inlet has been explored, we must speedily 

 set off after our comrades and then, later on when de Long 

 Fjord has been charted, set the course south towards the seals 

 by Dragon Point. 



Our geographical discoveries have been very interesting up 

 to now, and it is already obvious that the relation between 

 inland-ice and coastland should be marked out in an entirely 

 different way for that part of Greenland which we have now 

 traversed. We find everything is glaciated to a far greater 

 extent than we expected, and although of course it is the task 

 of every expedition to bring home as much new information as 

 possible, I cannot deny that, for our own safety's sake, we 

 might have wished for fewer corrections of all the lovely exten- 

 sive hunting-land which has up to the present been marked 

 down on all the American maps. 



Again to-day we see a lemming attempting to cross the 

 fjord. It comes from the clough close by our camp and 

 stubbornly sets its course where the crossing is at its broadest. 

 In comparison to its size it shoots ahead with dazing speed, 

 swimming through the snow with queer jumps. Occasionally 

 it disappears entirely in a tunnel to shoot up further ahead like 

 a dwarf seal coming up to breathe. With its weeny size and its 

 phenomenal energy, it seems paradoxical in these enormous 

 surroundings which swallow it up. 



One of our dogs scents it and rushes up so violently that the 

 traces break. In the same instant a cloud of snow whirls up 

 round the trail of the little wanderer ; for a few seconds yet the 

 lemming fights its way ahead, then suddenly it is flung high up 

 in the air to disappear still alive into the mouth of the dog. 



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