X.] 
TINTINYARANGA. 
509 
for festivals. For in order to break the monotony on board an 
opportunity was seldom neglected that offered itself for holding 
festivities. Away there on the coast of the Chukch peninsula 
there were thus celebrated with great conscientiousness during 
the winter of 1878-9, not only our own birthdays but also those 
of King Oscar, King Christian and King Humbert, and of the 
Emperor Alexander. Every day a newspaper was distributed, 
for the day indeed, but for a past year. In addition we numbered 
among our diversions constant intercourse with the natives, and 
frequent visits to the neighbouring villages, driving in dog- 
sledges, a sport which would have been very enjoyable if the 
dogs of the natives had not been so exceedingly poor and bad, 
and finally industrious reading and zealous studies, for which I 
had provided the expedition with an extensive library, intended 
both for the scientific men and officers, and for the crew, 
numbering with the private stock of books nearly a thousand 
volumes. 
All this time of course the purely scientific work was not 
neglected. In the first rank among these stood the meteoro¬ 
logical and magnetical observations, which from the 1st November 
were made on land every hour. However fast the ice lay 
around the vessel it was impossible to get on it a sufficiently 
stable base for the magnetical variation instrument. The 
magnetical observatory was therefore erected on land of the 
finest building material any architect has had at his disposal, 
namely, large parallelepipeds of beautiful blue-coloured ice- 
blocks. The building was therefore called by the Chukches 
Tintinyaranga (the ice-house), a name which was soon adopted 
by the Vega men too. As mortar the builder, Palander, used 
snow mixed with water, and the whole was covered with a 
roof of boards. But as after a time it appeared that the storm 
made its way through the joints and that these were gradually 
growing larger in consequence of the evaporation of the ice 
so that the drifting snow could find an entrance, the whole 
