The next day, May 27th, having awoke at 3 o’clock in the morning, I went on shore with Lieutenant Svedenborg. We went hunting over the mountains, amidst boulders of rock and deep ravines. We saw very little vegetation; a few scattered bushes of prickly shrubs, putting forth a few miserable shoots; a great deal of moss and grass in the damp parts surrounding the pools formed by the melting snow. Many springs swelled the streams, which formed numerous waterfalls on their way down to the sea. We brought down several birds, but lost some eiders, for these birds, when wounded and pursued, dive to reappear no more. They hide their bodies from their foe, perishing at the bottom of the sea by entangling themselves in the seaweed. The _Virgo_ joined us at 2 p.m. Her captain came on board for instructions. At 6 o’clock we weighed anchor, and set out for Spitzbergen. Andrée hoped that we should get there quickly, and without hindrance. The north north-east wind which had been blowing violently for some days, would, he thought, drive away the floes of ice from the coast of Greenland. For three days we were tormented by a strong north wind, which blew a gale. The sea was very rough. I was ill, and could eat nothing for two days—a victim to sea-sickness. However, I got up in the evening of May 30th. The vibrations of the vessel were then imperceptible to me. I was surprised at first, and then pleased. I seemed to be waking from a bad dream. Our boat rolled terribly, with sudden movements due to its flat shape—movements which were all the more frequent owing to the waves being very choppy in the northern seas. I could not, in spite of myself, help thinking of the smooth and easy motion of our transatlantic liners, where one is quite at one’s ease. I was astonished, on arriving on deck, to see the mountains that fringe Spitzbergen, and to hear that in three hours we should reach Dansk-Gatt, a strait between Dane’s Island and the Island of Amsterdam, to the north-west of Spitzbergen, in latitude 79° 43´. The _Virgo_ followed us at some distance; she too rolled a great deal. The wind was high and cold; some blocks of ice floated here and there, but not many. By a fortunate circumstance the Arctic Ocean was quite free. Andrée had predicted that it would be so, and he was pleased to see that he would lose no time this year. Nevertheless, those who had never visited these shores were somewhat deceived; they had expected to be encountering icebergs, and meeting with unheard-of difficulties. In fact they looked for something very different to ordinary voyages, something which would keep constantly before their minds the fact that they were in the Frozen Ocean. Our wishes were soon granted; the prevailing north-east wind had driven the ice floes into the open sea; the ice round the coast, being sheltered by the mountains, remained, and the entrance to the Dansk-Gatt was quite blocked up.