NOTES FROM AN ARCTIC JOURNAL. 105 
yet in the end it escaped; it was three o’clock in the morning of 
the same day before we got back to camp.* 
Whilst waiting at the Snowy Owl’s nest we found a Snow 
Bunting’s, containing three eggs; it was a well-made structure of 
grass, lined with the feathers of Nyctea scandiaca. Blowing 
eggs, skinning birds, and packing up our sledge, occupied us 
till mid-day, when we started for the ship, as every hour the 
rapidity of the thaw was increasing the risk of travelling over 
the floes. It may have been observed in this short account of 
my sledging experiences, that not unfrequently we were obliged to 
carry on without lying down to rest through twenty-four, thirty- 
six, and in some cases over forty hours of work. This, I think, 
would be hardly possible in regions where there is night and day 
in the twenty-four hours, but during the long continuous day of 
the Polar summer the human system seems capable of bearing 
up against the want of sleep in a truly remarkable manner. 
Leaving our camp we dragged our sledge on to the shore-ice, 
which extended for about a mile to seaward; and though it was 
covered at this season of the year with a layer of icy-cold water, 
which reached to our knees, yet beyond the discomfort of wading 
through water at 32° F. the travelling was tolerable and the sledge 
pulled easily ; but when we reached the old floe, and from there 
to Simmond’s Island, the travelling was truly execrable. In the 
sodden snow which lay between the ice-hillocks and ridges of the 
ancient floes we often sunk up to our bips, and slush and ice-cold 
water reached above our knees. Over and over again, as we 
tugged at the deeply-imbedded sledge, it moved suddenly forward, 
throwing us on our faces, and we found no little difficulty in 
regaining an upright position. However, we reached Simmond’s 
Island by 6 p.m., took our guns and walked round it. We saw 
four pairs of Brent Geese on it, and found three nests; one 
contained five eggs, the others four. The nests, as usual, were 
solid structures of grass and moss, the eggs being buried in a 
mass of down from the breast of the parent bird. We shot five 
out of the eight geese breeding on this island. By 8 p.m. we 
were back to the sledge, lashed on the dead geese, and were 
again in the drag-ropes. The journey from the island to the 
mainland was equally arduous as that we had encountered in the 
* The eggs from this nest of Nyctea scandiaca—seven in number—passed 
safely through the ordeal of the sledge journey, and are now in the British Museum. 
P 
