478 THE SWEDISH ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



the ship was due, and the following day our stone hut was readj' for 

 use. The depot had been established only for the time until the ship 

 should return, and was thus insufficient for wintering-. Some hundred 

 peno'uins were killed to supply' us with fresh meat, and seal blubber 

 was used as fuel. 



The winter passed without accident, but with a complete lack of 

 intellectual emplo^yment. On September 29 we started again for the 

 station on Snow Hill, were stopped for three da3^s in a violent snow-~ 

 storm, and then went on slowly in unsettled weather. On October 12, 

 traveling along the coast of the above-mentioned island, we, b}" a 

 strange coincidence, unexpectedly met with Nordenskiold, who had 

 reached this region through a large interior channel just then discovered 

 by him. Loading our effects upon his dog sledge, we continued the 

 journey pleasantly through Sidney Herbert Sound and outside Mount 

 Haddington. After four daj's' traveling in splendid weather, we 

 reached Snow Hill on October 16. 



Our sledge part}' was dispatched from the Antarctic to fulfill a duty 

 that we failed to carr}'^ out in face of natural obstacles which we could 

 not master. The scientific results of our undertaking are very limited. 

 Living during the winter in a misery of dirt and darkness, and want- 

 ing also the simplest instruments, we Avere unable to make an}^ kind of 

 observations. Still, our time was not spent totally in vain. We 

 entered a virgin area, where Duse made a survej- that forms a neces- 

 sary link between his chart of the Orleans Channel and the extensive 

 cartographical work executed by Nordenskiold and Duse together 

 farther south on the east coast. 



In the Orleans Channel I collected some facts, adding to the evidence 

 brought forward by Mr. Arytowski, and proving that the large chan- 

 nel was once filled by an immense glacier moving in a northeast direc- 

 tion. Near to our wintering place I found some other and veiy striking 

 traces of an earlier wider extension of the glaciers. This material will 

 soon be published, in combination with mj- observations from South 

 Georgia, the Falkland Islands, and Tierra del Fuego. 



On the geological survey of the vicinity of the l)ay where we 

 wintered, I made another noticeable find— well-preserved plant fossils, 

 cycadas, conifers, and ferns, a flora of apparently Lower Mesozoic age. 

 A small selection of this material was brought with us on the sledge 

 to Snow Hill, but the great mass was left at our winter place, and 

 afterwards picked up by the Argentine relief ship. 



Our involuntary wintering brought also a certain practical result. 

 By force of circumstances, living principall}' on the products of sur- 

 rounding nature, and, like Nansen and Johansen in Franz Josef Land, 

 in many respects following the mode of life of the Eskimo, we, 

 together with the party wintering on Paulet Island, accumulated an 



