"Saturday, July 6th. 33.8° Fahr. (+1° C.). Rain. At last, after a fortnight, we seem to have got the weather we have been waiting for. It has rained the whole night and forenoon, and is still at it--real, good rain: so now, perhaps, this everlasting snow will take itself off; it is as soft and loose as scum. If only this rain would go on for many days! But before we have time to look round there will be a cold wind with snow, a crust will form, and again we must wait. I am too used to disappointment to believe in anything. This is a school of patience; but nevertheless the rain has put us in good spirits. "The days drag wearily by. We work in an intermittent way at the kayak grips of wood for our sledges, and at calking and painting our kayaks to make them water-tight. The painting, however, causes me a good deal of trouble. I burned bones here for many days till the whole place smelled like the bone-dust works at Lysaker; then came the toilsome process of pounding and grating them to make them perfectly fine and even. The bone-dust was thereupon mixed with train-oil, and at last I got as far as a trial, but the paint proved uncompromisingly to be perfectly useless. So now I must mix it with soot, as I had first intended, and add more oil. I am now occupied in smoking the place out in my attempts to make soot; but all my exertions, when it comes to collecting it, only result in a little pinch, although the smoke towered in the air, and they might have seen it in Spitzbergen. There is a great deal to do battle with when one has not a shop next door. What would I not give for a little bucket of oil-paint, only common lampblack! Well, well; we shall find a way out of the difficulty eventually, but meanwhile we are growing like sweeps. "On Wednesday evening 'Haren' was killed; poor beast, he was not good for much latterly, but he had been a first-rate dog, and it was hard, I fancy, for Johansen to part with him; he looked sorrowfully at the animal before it went to the happy hunting-grounds, or wherever it may be draught-dogs go to. Perhaps to places where there are plains of level ice and no ridges and lanes. There are only two dogs left now--'Suggen' and 'Kaifas'--and we must keep them alive as long as we can, and have use for them.