SEEKING HELP 



for the relief sledges. All the night and the following day are 

 taken up in these preparations, for sledges and dogs have not 

 been used during the whole summer, and there is much to look 

 over and renew. At length, at noon on the 1st of September, 

 everything is ready, and six men and five dogs start. The 

 baggage is brought in two boats, the dogs being driven across 

 land to the head of Foulke Fjord. Already on the following 

 day they will be in the land of the reindeer. Their orders are 

 to go no further than the big lake with the ice-mountains which 

 Ajako and I reached after a march of two days. Here a beacon 

 is to be built where the main provisions and two men are to 

 be left, whilst the remainder, also carrying provisions, are to 

 search the district northward in different directions. As my 

 agreement with Dr. Wulff's party was that they, or at any 

 rate, Harrigan and Bosun, were to go southward to this lake 

 as quickly as their condition permitted, it cannot be many days 

 before the new helpers with their provisions meet with our 

 comrades. 



September 1st. — Ajako and I are standing on a point of 

 the land following with our eyes the boats speeding away. How 

 good again to see fresh folk set to with a strength which need 

 not be saved ! All the impressions we receive are so new to 

 us, everything we see so different to that from which we come. 

 Before us lie the grass-covered slopes of Etah, which, fertilized 

 by millions of sea-kings, look like hanging gardens between the 

 cloughs. Towards the west the open living sea unclosed by 

 the dead quiet of the Polar- ice ; the smell of salt water and 

 pungent seaweed which we inhale through our nostrils — how 

 different to the flat fresh water of the east coast ! 



Ajako bends down, filling his hollow hands with fjord 

 water, which he raises to his face to feel and inhale its salt 

 freshness. 



In these drops he smells the meat of walrus, narwhal, and 

 seals — flesh of all the blubbery marine animals which shall now 

 make our days good. 



Beautiful ocean ! I recognize you, now I am home ! 

 R 257 



