THE WINTER NIGHT 281 



the other side of the pack. But now the disturbance 

 begins to cahii down. The noise passes on, and is lost 

 by degrees in the distance. 



This is what goes on away there in the north month 

 after month and year after year. The ice is spht and 

 piled up into mounds, which extend in every direction. 

 If one could get a bird's-eye view of the ice-fields, they 

 would seem to be cut up into squares or meshes by a 

 network of these packed ridges, or pressure-dikes, as we 

 called them, because they reminded us so much of snow- 

 covered stone dikes at home, such as, in many parts of 

 the country, are used to enclose fields. At first sight 

 these pressure-ridges appeared to be scattered about in 

 all possible directions, but on closer inspection I was 

 sure that I discovered certain directions which they 

 tended to take, and especially that they were apt to run 

 at right angles to the course of the pressure which 

 produced them. In the accounts of Arctic expeditions 

 one often reads descriptions of pressure-ridges or press- 

 ure-hummocks as high as 50 feet. These are fairy tales. 

 The authors of such fantastic descriptions cannot have 

 taken the trouble to measure. During the whole period 

 of our drifting and of our travels over the ice-fields in 

 the far north I only once saw a hummock of a greater 

 height than 23 feet. Unfortunately, I had not the op- 

 portunity of measuring this one, but I believe I may say 

 with certainty that it was very nearly 30 feet high. All 

 the highest blocks I measured — and they were many — 



