4/2 FARTHEST NORTH 



ship. On going after them on the ice I soon shot one of 

 them, and was not a little surprised, on picking it up, to 

 find it was a little bird about the size of a snipe ; the 

 mottled back, too, reminded me also of that bird. Soon 

 after this I shot the other. Later in the day there came 

 another, which was also shot. On picking this one up I 

 found it was not quite dead, and it vomited up a couple 

 of large shrimps, which it must have caught in some 

 channel or other. All three were young birds, about 12 

 inches in length, with dark mottled gray plumage on the 

 back and wings; the breast and under side white, with a 

 scarcely perceptible tinge of orange-red, and round the 

 neck a dark ring sprinkled with gray." At a somewhat 

 later age this mottled plumage disappears; they then 

 become blue on the back, with a black ring round the 

 neck, while the breast assumes a delicate pink hue. 

 Some few days afterwards (August 6th and Sth) some 

 more of these birds were shot, making eight specimens 

 in all. 



While time was passing on, the plan I had been re- 

 volving in my mind during the winter was ever upper- 

 most in my thoughts — the plan, that is to say, of ex- 

 ploring the unknown sea apart from the track in which 

 the Frain was drifting, I kept an anxious eye upon the 

 dogs, for fear anything should happen to them, and also 

 to see that they continued in good condition, for all my 

 hopes centred in them. Several of them, indeed, had 

 been bitten to death, and two had been killed by bears ; 



