"Sunday, June 30th. So this is the end of June, and we are about the same place as when we began the month. And the state of the snow? Well, better it certainly is not; but the day is fine. It is so warm that we are quite hot lying here inside the tent. Through the open door we can see out over the ice where the sun is glittering through white sailing cirrus clouds on the dazzling whiteness. And then there is a Sunday calm, with a faint breeze mostly from the southeast, I think. Ah me! it is lovely at home to-day, I am sure, with everything in bloom and the fjord quivering in the sunlight; and you are sitting out on the point with Liv, perhaps, or are on the water in your boat. And then one's eye wanders out through the door again, and I am reminded there is many an ice-floe between now and then, before the time when I shall see it all again. "Here we lie far up in the north; two grim, black, soot-stained barbarians, stirring a mess of soup in a kettle and surrounded on all sides by ice; by ice and nothing else--shining and white, possessed of all the purity we ourselves lack. Alas, it is all too pure! One's eye searched to the very horizon for a dark spot to rest on, but in vain. When will it really come to pass? Now we have waited for it two months. All the birds seemed to have disappeared to-day; not even a cheery little auk to be seen. They were here until yesterday, and we have heard them flying north and south, probably to and from land, where they have gone, I suppose, now that there is so little water about in these parts. If only we could move as easily as they! "Wednesday, July 3d. Why write again? What have I to commit to these pages? Nothing but the same overpowering longing to be home and away from this monotony. One day just like the other, with the exception, perhaps, that before it was warm and quiet, while the last two days there has been a south wind blowing, and we are drifting northward. Found from a meridian altitude yesterday that we have drifted back to 82° 8.4' N., while the longitude is about the same. Both yesterday and the day before we had to a certain extent really brilliant sunshine, and this for us is a great rarity. The horizon in the south was fairly clear yesterday, which it had not been for a long time; but we searched it in vain for land. I do not understand it.... "We had a fall of snow last night, and it dripped in here so that the bag became wet. This constant snowfall, which will not turn to rain, is enough to make one despair. It generally takes the form of a thick layer of new snow on the top of the old, and this delays the thaw. "This wind seems to have formed some lanes in the ice again, and there is a little more bird-life. We saw some little auks again yesterday; they came from the south, probably from land.