CHAPTER VIII 

 THE NEW YEAR, 1 896 



" Wednesday, January i, 1896. —41.5^ C. (4-2.2° below 

 zero, Fahr.). So a new year has come, the year of joy 

 and home-coming. In bright moonhght 1895 departed, 

 and in bright moonhght 1896 begins; but it is bitterly 

 cold, the coldest days we have yet known here. I felt it, 

 too, yesterday, when all my finger-tips were frost-bitten. 

 I thought I had done with all that last spring. 



" Friday, January 3d. Morning. It is still clear and 

 cold out-of-doors ; I can hear reports from the glacier. 

 It lies up there on the crest of the mountain like a 

 mighty ice-giant peering down at us through the clefts. 

 It spreads its giant body all over the land, and stretches 

 out its limbs on all sides into the sea. But whenever it 

 turns cold — colder than it has hitherto been — it writhes 

 horribly, and crevice after crevice appears in the huge 

 body ; there is a noise like the discharge of guns, and the 

 sky and the earth tremble so that I can feel the ground 

 that I am lying on quake. One is almost afraid that it 

 will some day come rolling over upon one.* 



* These rumblings in the glacier are due to rifts which are formed in 

 the mass of ice when the cold causes it to contract. New rifts seemed 



