212 FARTHEST NOR'TH 



and meanwhile our flag for the ' Seventeenth of May ' 

 shall wave above the eighty-third parallel, and if fate 

 send us the first sight of land to-day our joy will be two- 

 fold. 



" Yesterday was a hard day. The weather was fine, 

 even brilliant, the going splendid, and the ice good, so 

 that one had a right to expect progress were it not for 

 the dogs. They pull up at everything, and for the man 

 ahead it is a continual o:oinii' over the same j^round three 

 times : first to find a way and make a track, and then 

 back aoain to drive on the doQ-s ; it is slow work indeed. 

 Across quite flat ice the dogs keep up to the mark 

 pretty well, but at the first difiiculty they stop. I tried 

 harnessing myself in front of them yesterday, and it 

 answered pretty well; but when it came to finding the 

 way in foul ice it had to be abandoned. 



" In spite of everything, we are pushing forward, 

 and eventually shall have our reward ; but for the time 

 being this would be ample could we only reach land 

 and land-ice without these execrable lanes. Yesterday 

 we had four of them. The first that stopped us did 

 not cause immoderate trouble; then we went over a 

 short bit of middling ice, though, with lane after lane 

 and ridges. Then came another bad lane, necessitat- 

 ing a circuit. After this we traversed some fairly 

 sood ice, this time considerably more of it than 

 previously, but soon came to a lane, or rather a pool, 

 of greater size than we had ever seen before — ex- 



