"It has been a long year--a great deal has been gone through in it--though we are quite as far advanced as I had anticipated. I am sitting, and look out of the window at the snow whirling round in eddies as it is swept along by the north wind. A strange Midsummer-day! One might think we had had enough of snow and ice; I am not, however, exactly pining after green fields--at all events, not always. On the contrary, I find myself sitting by the hour laying plans for other voyages into the ice after our return from this one.... Yes, I know what I have attained, and, more or less, what awaits me. It is all very well for me to sketch plans for the future. But those at home.... No, I am not in a humor for writing this evening; I will turn in. "Wednesday, July 11th. Lat. 81° 18' 8''. At last the southerly wind has returned, so there is an end of drifting south for the present. "Now I am almost longing for the polar night, for the everlasting wonderland of the stars with the spectral northern lights, and the moon sailing through the profound silence. It is like a dream, like a glimpse into the realms of fantasy. There are no forms, no cumbrous reality--only a vision woven of silver and violet ether, rising up from earth and floating out into infinity.... But this eternal day, with its oppressive actuality, interests me no longer--does not entice me out of my lair. Life is one incessant hurrying from one task to another; everything must be done and nothing neglected, day after day, week after week; and the working-day is long, seldom ending till far over midnight. But through it all runs the same sensation of longing and emptiness, which must not be noted. Ah, but at times there is no holding it aloof, and the hands sink down without will or strength--so weary, so unutterably weary. "Ah! life's peace is said to be found by holy men in the desert. Here, indeed, there is desert enough; but peace--of that I know nothing. I suppose it is the holiness that is lacking. "Wednesday, July 18th. Went on excursion with Blessing in the forenoon to collect specimens of the brown snow and ice, and gather seaweed and diatoms in the water. The upper surface of the floes is nearly everywhere of a dirty brown color, or, at least, this sort of ice preponderates, while pure white floes, without any traces of a dirty brown on their surface, are rare. I imagined this brown color must be due to the organisms I found in the newly-frozen, brownish-red ice last autumn (October); but the specimens I took to-day consist, for the most part, of mineral dust mingled with diatoms and other ingredients of organic origin. [57]