VI.] 
AN ADVENTUROUS JOURNEY. 
305 
good, but when it came to an end at the new year, their 
food for three weeks consisted mainly of ill-smelling salt bears’ 
flesh. Tobiesen and one of the men were now taken ill. 
The cold sank to — 39|-° C.^ On the 29th April, ‘ 1873, 
Tobiesen died of scurvy. In the month of May his son was 
also attacked, and died on the 5th July. The two men also 
suffered from scurvy, but recovered. They rowed south in the 
month of August, and were rescued by a Eussian hunting- 
vessel. 
The seven men, the harpooner Henrik Nilsen, Ole Andreas 
Olsen, Axel Henriksen, Amandus Hansen, Nils Andreas Eoxen, 
Johan Andersson and Lars Larsen, who rowed away in autumn, 
had an exceedingly remarkable fate. When they left the vessel 
they could only take with them fourteen ship biscuits, six boxes 
of lucifers, two guns, with ammunition, a spy-glass, a coffee¬ 
pot and an iron pot, but no winter clothes to protect them from 
the cold. At first, in order to get to open water, they had to 
drag the boat about seven kilometres over the ice. They then 
steered southwards along the land. The journey was made 
under circumstances of great difficulty and privation. The 
darkness and cold increased, as did the storm, and what was 
worst of all their stock of provisions was very soon consumed. 
On the second day, however, they were fortunate enough to 
shoot a bear; afterwards they also succeeded in killing a pair 
of seals. Finally, after having partly rowed and partly sailed 
about three weeks (they had no almanac with them), and tra¬ 
velled nearly 400 kilometres, they came to two small hunting or 
store houses, which the Eussians had built^on the north side of 
Gooseland. In order to have at least a roof over their heads 
the exhausted men settled there, though in the house they 
1 At Mussel Bay, too, during the winter of 1872-73, the greatest degree 
of cold was the same ; that is to say, at neither place did it reach the 
freezing-point of mercury. At the Vega's winter station, on the contrary, 
it was considerably greater. 
X 
