I40 FARTHEST NORTH 



had done about 9 miles. As we had just reached a good 

 camping -ground, and the dogs were tired, we stopped. 

 Lowest temperature last night, —45'^ Fahr. ( — 42.S" C.)." 



The ice continued to become more even during the 

 following days, and our marches often amounted to 14 

 miles or more in the day. Now and then a misfortune 

 might happen which detained us, as, for instance, one 

 day a sharp spike of ice which was standing up cut a 

 hole in a sack of fish Hour, and all the delicious food ran 

 out. It took us more than an hour to collect it all 

 again and repair the damages. Then the odometer got 

 broken through being jammed in some uneven ice, and it 

 took some hours to mend it by a process of lashing. 

 But on we went northward, often over great, wide ice- 

 plains which seemed as if they must stretch right to the 

 Pole. Sometimes it happened that we passed through 

 places where the ice was " unusuall)- massive, with high 

 hummocks, so that it looked like undulating country 

 covered with snow." This was undoubtedly very old 

 ice, which had drifted in the Polar Sea for a long time on 

 its way from the Siberian Sea to the ea^t coast of Green- 

 land, and which had been subjected year after year to 

 severe pressure. High hummocks and mounds are thus 

 formed, which summer after summer are partially melted 



kayaks, now that the temperature was so low. Even if the water in them 

 had not nearly always been covered with a more or less thick layer of ice. 

 the kayaks would have become much heavier from the immediate freezing 

 of the water which would have entered, as they proved to be not absolute- 

 ly impervious; and this ice we had then no means of dislodging. 



