228 FARTHEST NORTH 



and consequently freed from salt. W^e were obliged to 

 be content with snow for our drinking-water.* Certain 

 it is that where these great expanses of flat ice come 

 from there was open water last summer or autumn, and 

 that of no little extent, as we have passed over many 

 miles of this compact ice the whole day yesterday and 

 a good part of the previous day, besides which there 

 were formerly a considerable number of such tracts in 

 between older, summer-old ice. There is little proba- 

 bility that this should have been formed in the vicinity 

 hereabouts. More probably it has come from farther 

 east or southeast, and was formed in open water on the 

 east side of Wilczek's Land. I believe, consequently, 

 that this must indicate that there can be not a little 

 open water alouQ- the east or northeast coast of JVilezelcs 

 Land in the siunnier or antnmji months.^ 



* For melting water in the cooker it is better to use ice than snow, 

 particularly if the latter be not old and granular. Newly fallen snow gives 

 little water, and requires considerably more heat to warm it. That part 

 of salt-water ice which is above the surface of the sea, and, in particular, 

 prominent pieces which have been exposed to the rays of the sun during 

 a summer and are thus freed from the greater part of their salt, furnish 

 excellent drinking-water. Some expeditions liave harbored the supersti- 

 tion that drinking-water from ice in which there was the least salt was 

 injurious. This is a mistake which cost, for instance, the members of 

 \\\ii Jcainicttc expedition much unnecessary trouble, as they thought it im- 

 perative to distil the water before they could drink it without incurring 

 the risk of scurvy. 



t As will be understood by our later discoveries, my surmises were not 

 quite correct. We really were at that time north or northeast of Wilc- 

 zek's Land, which seems tc be only a little island. Meanwhile there must 

 have been extensive open water the previous autumn where this ice was 

 formed. But when it is shown later how much open water we saw on the 



