350 FARTHEST NORTH 



arriving finally at a lane which ran westward, in which 

 we could paddle ; but it soon packed together again, and 

 we were stopped. The ivory- gulls are very bold, and 

 last night stole a piece of blubber lying close by the 

 tent wall." 



The following day we had to make our way as well as 

 w^e could by paddling short distances in the lanes or 

 hauling our loads over floes smaller or larger, as the 

 case might be. The current, which was running like 

 a mill-race, ground tliem together in its career. Our 

 progress with our short, stumpy sledges was nothing 

 very great, and of water suitable for paddling in we 

 found less and less. We stopped several times and 

 waited for the ice to open at the turn of the tide, but 

 it did not do so, and on the morning of August 15th 

 we gave it up, turned inward, and took to the shore-ice 

 for good. We set our course westward towards the 

 sound v;e had seen for several days now, and had 

 struggled so to reach. The surface of the ice was 

 tolerably even and we got over the ground well. On 

 the way we passed a frozen-in iceberg, which was the 

 hio"hest we saw in these parts — some so to 60 feet, I 

 should say.* I wished to go up it to get a better view 



* Icebergs of considerable size have been described as having been 

 seen off Franz Josef Land, but I can only say with reference to this that 

 during the whole of our voyage through this archipelago we saw nothing 

 of the kind. The one mentioned here was the biggest of ail those we 

 came across, and they were, compared with the Greenland icebergs, quite 

 insigniticant masses of glacier-ice. 



