SHERARD OSBORNE FJORD 



The situation at present is a desperate one ; we do not 

 know at all what to do or where to search, for as the country is 

 yet bare of snow there are no tracks to guide us, and as 

 Hendrik, according to Bosun's tale, seems to have continued 

 his hunting, it is impossible to know which direction he has 

 taken. It is unthinkable that he should have lost his way, 

 especially as he is on an island. We incline to the assumption 

 that during the pursuit of hares he must have fallen with his 

 gun and shot himself. The hares here have their haunts be- 

 tween clefts and stones, and to find a man who has had 

 an accident in such a place would be purely a matter of 

 chance. 



In this connection I am reminded of an episode from the 

 colony Christianshaab, in Danish North Greenland. A boy 

 was accidentally shot about 3 or i kilometres from the colony 

 itself. The whole camp, numbering about eighty people, went 

 searching for him, but without result. Three years later he 

 was found quite accidentally, as a couple of ptarmigan hunters 

 ran across him ; and here he lay, literally on the high road of 

 the ptarmigan and hare hunters, but in a stony track where 

 only sheer chance had led people to him. 



For the time being we continue our search. In the mean- 

 time the fjord-ice which we must pass along on our crossing to 

 Warming Land approaches its absolute melting. Around us 

 the water grows deeper and deeper, in certain places form- 

 ing holes which go right through the ice. For every day 

 the difficulties connected with the traversing of such terrain 

 increase. Furthermore, the immediate neighbourhood has 

 been hunted empty of hares, so it is increasingly difficult to 

 keep the dogs in fair condition. 



A large, showery cloud-bank draws up from south-east and 

 increases the dismal feeling which rests over the tent and makes 

 us all silent. At every sound from the mountain, when a 

 stone loosens and rolls down or a bird breaks the silence with 

 its scream, we start up and run out of the tent to see if, maybe, 

 it is the missing one returning. If in addition a storm is to set 

 in it will probably be impossible to cross the fjord ; and we have 



195 



