98 THE LAST CRUISE OF THE MIRANDA. 



ment. We made face-masks of mosquito-netting and wire to 

 wear when out hunting, otherwise the torture would have 

 been unbearable. All day long we rowed, spelling each other 

 at intervals, and reached the ship at about ten in the even- 

 ing. Of course, it was still light at that time. We had no 

 night as we understand it, only a few hours of dusk or twi- 

 light. We were about forty miles from the Arctic Circle. 

 Across that the Arctic summer is one long day. 



" A polar day, which will not see 

 A sunset till its summer's gone — 

 Its sleepless summer of long light, 

 The snow-clad offspring of the sun." 



The glacier party had returned a few hours earlier, but Dr. 

 Cook and his associates had not yet put in an appearance. 

 Professor Wright and his party were much pleased with the 

 results of their trip, although they, as we, had had a pretty 

 rough time of it with rain and wind storms. They had been 

 enabled during the few fine days to explore and measure sev- 

 eral glaciers pretty thoroughly, however, and Mr. Kersting 

 had secured a number of photographs — pictures taken with 

 great labor and pains, and destined soon to be carried down 

 into the sea. From notes supplied by him I am enabled to 

 give a brief account of this expedition. The party started Au- 

 gust 9 in a whale-boat, loaned by Governor Bistrup, with two 

 dories from the Miranda as convoys. They took with them 

 five Eskimos as guides and to help with the rowing. At sun- 

 set they reached Ikamuit, a small Eskimo settlement contain- 

 ing four houses. The year before the place had been almost 

 entirely swept away by a great body of water that rushed 

 down from a neighboring mountain and swept away the little 

 igloos and drowned several inhabitants. Ikamuit signifies 

 *' place without shelter." The party found it worthy of its 

 name, for they were caught in the same storm that overtook 



