Geography and Travel. 1099 
17th of July left them on the drifting ice with the land in sight 
some few miles distant. From that time until they could reae 
the inhabited west coast of Greenland communication with the rest 
of,the living world would be an absolute impossibility. A stretch 
of 450 miles, never traversed by man, lay before them ; they had 
their Norwegian ski, provisions fortwo months, and necessary in- 
struments for making observations, and they started for the shore. 
They had to make their way across the glaciers in two months or die. 
Not before next summer can we haye a complete report of the 
journey ; till then we must, with the information we get from two 
hurriedly written letters which, by mere accident, came over in 
the last vessel from that region this year. The letter from the mate 
Sverdrup to his father is given below: 
GODTHAAB, Oct. 4, 1888. 
“Yesterday, after sixty-four days’ journey from the east coast, we 
arrived here all safe. The landing was more difficult than we had 
calculated. The drifting ice upon which we stepped when leaving 
the whaler was moving very rapidly toward the south and off from 
the shore, and it took us twelve days to reach the shore. In that time 
we had drifted nearly 100 miles. As soon as we had terra firma 
under foot we started northward along the coast, looking for a place 
where it would be possible to ascend the solid inlandice, After 
another twelve days’ search we finally found such a place, made our_ 
way up without very great difficulty, and on the 16th of August 
we commenced our westward march. We at first laid our course 
for Christianshaab (a settlement to the northwest), but when we 
had reached an elevation of about 7500 feet a terrible snow storm 
met us, and we concluded to take a more southerly direction 
found a stretch of about twenty miles wide free from snow, 
miles of which was along the edge of a fiord. We brought the tent and 
provisions down to the shore and built a camp ; further p 
seemed for a time impossible. Then we made a small boat from, 
rt of the tent and a canvas When this boat was ready Dr. 
ansen and I started for this place, and after’ four days’ rowing 
we arrived here, and were very kindly received by the people. 
Two boats are now sent to the camp, where we left our companions, 
to bring them down here. The post-ship has left long ago, but 
some fifty miles farther south there is a steamer, having been acci- 
