SHERARD OSBORNE FJORD 



terday I sent Harrigan and Ajako to Cape May to reconnoitre ; 

 their observations revealed the fact that the road from our camp 

 to the cape itself will be difficult ; on the other hand, it seems 

 that the fjord itself, despite occasional clefts, will not be quite 

 impossible. Therefore, let us spit on our hands ! 



At five o'clock in the afternoon of the 15th of July we are 

 ready to start. Standing there on the ice ready to throw our- 

 selves out into the water, Summer Valley appears more pretty 

 than ever. The afternoon sun sheds its colours over the green- 

 speckled slopes, and the inland-ice behind the country hangs 

 over the friendly babbling river in beautiful pink shades. Even 

 the great ice-covered ocean has put on gay garments, phantastic 

 mirages breaking the dead monotony of the horizon by erecting 

 aerial castles above the plane of the desert. Beaumont Island 

 with its sharp, dark cliffs has risen above the ice and hovers high 

 up in the air swathed in violet hues. 



But we have no time for poetic moods ; before us lies the 

 grey, everyday prose in the many water-filled hollows we have 

 to cross. For the first four hours we work our way out through 

 the great river delta, where the water often reaches to our 

 waists. In most places the dogs cannot reach the bottom, so 

 we ourselves must undertake the work of getting the sledges 

 across the deep lakes. Especially when the sledge-snouts get 

 stuck below the hollowed ice-hummocks we find work hard, for 

 then we have to lie down with our arms in the water, wrenching 

 the sledges backwards out of the obstacle. 



To save our collections, the photographic material, diaries, 

 and other important matters, from a soaking, we build another 

 storey to the sledges, erecting two staffs on the foremost tran- 

 soms and building a bridge of skis between these and the up- 

 rights ; this is a very helpful invention. 



Near Cape May the ice improves greatly, and to our great 

 surprise we find on the first half of Sherard Osborne Fjord the 

 best ice we have as yet encountered up here. The melted water 

 has apparently oozed through, so the basins are for the most 

 part dry or at any rate covered merely by very shallow water. 

 The dogs trot along in good fettle with one man on the sledge, 



183 



