when they set their hearts on business. The weather during the day was variable. When they started, it was quite thick, and the wind blew strongly in their faces, making the traveling very disagreeable; but toward the latter part of the march, the wind died away and the sun appeared. The traveling was better than when outward bound, the late storm having improved it very much. Brainard did all the cooking, Lockwood chopping the ice and assisting in various ways. They got off a little after six, and in two hours were at Black Cape. Here they stopped awhile and built a cairn, and at Blue Cape stopped again. The next four and a half hours they pursued their monotonous course across the floe, Lockwood indulging in these reflections: “What thoughts one has when thus plodding along! Home and everything there, and the scenes and incidents of early youth! Home, again, when this Arctic experience shall be a thing of the past! But it must be confessed, and lamentable, it is, as well as true, that the reminiscences to which my thoughts oftenest recur on these occasions are connected with eating—the favorite dishes I have enjoyed—while in dreams of the future, my thoughts turn from other contemplations to the discussion of a beefsteak, and, equally absurd, to whether the stew and tea at our next supper will be hot or cold.” They next camped some miles from North Cape, opposite the immense fiord there, which runs inland an interminable distance without visible land at its head. Lockwood had intended going up this fiord to what seemed like the opening of a channel on the south side of Cape Britannia, but the uncertainty and their fatigue finally induced him to continue the way they had come, the weather being delightful. Ritenbank went about all day with his head and tail down, perhaps repenting his numerous thefts. Advanced seventeen miles in eight hours. Left camp at 6 P. M., and in about three hours reached North Cape, where they stopped some time to take a sub-polar observation, making its latitude 82° 51′. Cape Britannia was reached without event, and there they stopped long enough to get the rations left in _cache_, and deposit a record in the cairn; then continued on the floe a half-mile to get out of the shadow of the mountain. At the cairn they got the snow-shoes left there, and the spare sledge-runner. They also collected some specimens of the vegetation and rocks, and saw traces of the musk-ox, showing that these animals wander even this far north. They saw also some snow-birds. They had thought that when they reached Cape Britannia they would feel near home; but now having reached it, the station seemed as far off as at any point they had left behind, and they could not rest until Cape Bryant was reached.