As soon as spring came round Nordenskiöld set out upon his northern journey. Any hopes that he might have entertained of being able to push far north were soon dashed to the ground, for at Seven Islands he found the ice so bad that it was useless for him to attempt to cross it. He decided, therefore, to proceed with what was really the more valuable work of examining North-East Land, with a view to determining its geological structure and to settling its eastern limit, which had always been a vexed question. Round the shore the ice was rough and hummocky, and going was slow in consequence. On June 1 the explorers were obliged to take to the inland ice, the sea front of which, it may be said, presents the largest known glacier. Here their way became perilous as well as merely difficult. “Scarcely had we advanced 2000 feet,” says Nordenskiöld, “before one of our men disappeared at a place where the ice was quite level, and so instantaneously that he could not even give a cry for help. When we, affrighted, looked into the hole made where he disappeared, we found him hanging on the drag-line, to which he was fastened with reindeer harness, over a deep abyss. He was hoisted out unhurt.” Accidents like these were of frequent occurrence, while the monotony of the journey was also varied by a long series of canals 30 to 100 feet wide, with vertical walls sometimes 40 feet high. These canals were often crossed by snow bridges which had a way of collapsing under the travellers’ feet, but none of the men came to any serious harm. Nordenskiöld’s original plan of making for Cape Mohn was put out of the question by an impassable terrain, and he accordingly descended into Hinlopen Strait at Wahlenberg Bay and thence returned to his headquarters. There the party had the good fortune to be found by the English yachtsman, Leigh Smith, who relieved them of all fears for the future.