IV£ SAV GOOD-BYE TO THE '' FRAM " 153 



86°, and, therefore, supposed there must be somethino- 

 wrong with the observation. 



" Saturday, March 30th. Yesterday was Tycho 

 Brahe's day. At first we found much uneven ice, and 

 had to strike a devious route to o^et throuo-h it, so that 

 our days march did not amount to much, although we 

 kept at it a long time. At the end of it, however, and 

 after considerable toil, we found ourselves on splendid 

 flat ice, more level than it had been for a lono- time. 

 At last, then, we had come on some more of the good 

 old kind, and could not complain of some rubble and 

 snow-drifts here and there; but then we were stopped 

 by some ugly pressure-ridges of the worst kind, formed 

 by the packing of enormous blocks. The last ridge 

 was the worst of all, and before it yawned a crack in the 

 thick ice about 1 2 feet deep. When the first sledge 

 was going over all the dogs fell in and had to be hauled 

 up again. One of them — ' Klapperslangen " — slipped 

 his harness and ran away. As the next sledge was 

 going over it fell in bodily, but happily was not smashed 

 to atoms, as it might have been. We had to unload it 

 entirely in order to get it up again, and then reload, all 

 of which took up a great deal of time. Then, too, the 

 dogs had to be thrown down and dragged up on the 

 other side. With the third sledge we managed better, 

 and after we had gone a little way farther the runaway 

 dog came back. At last we reached a camping-ground, 

 pitched our tent, and found that the thermometer showed 



