CHAPTER IX 

 ACROSS MELTING ICE TO SUMMER VALLEY 



ICE-WATER BATHS 



JULY 3rd-14th. — After two fickle months the weather at 

 last settled down, a change which apparently will last 

 through this month, fortunately for us ! For after ev ery ., 

 day's journey, during which with great toil we cover a modest 

 distance of 15 to 16 kilometres in twelve to eighteen hours, all 

 our clothes and goods need a good drying, and this could not be 

 managed if the good sun did not during our nightly sleep once 

 more make serviceable everything which the distracting summer 

 conditions of the ice destroys for us. 



The journey goes through ice-water, and it is only occasion- 

 ally that we have an opportunity of a moment's rest on " dry 

 ice." The warmth has converted the rough Polar-ice into a 

 hopeless system of channels and pools, where from occasional 

 blocks push up as islands in a huge swamp of ice. In the begin- 

 ning we sought obstinately for the best places where a zigzag 

 advance was possible ; but this method has been given up long 

 ago, for everything is wet through in spite of all our efforts. All 

 through the day we wade up to our knees in the ice-water, and, 

 whilst we get wet through to our waists under the work with the 

 sledges, which constantly get stuck in the holes, the same fate 

 overtakes our reserve clothes. First the water pours over the 

 sledges in front, then behind, according to the different posi- 

 tions it occupies in the melted hollows. 



We have crawled in this way for three days — from Centrum 

 Island to McMillan Valley by the mouth of Victoria Fjord — 

 a three-days-long bath in the cold water, often covered thinly 

 by new ice which cuts the paws of the dogs as it breaks into 

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