"The mist soon rose a little. It was then a dead calm; the surface of the water lay like a great mirror before us, with bits of ice and an occasional floe drifting on it. It was a marvellously beautiful sight, and it was indeed glorious to sit there in our light vessels and glide over the surface without any exertion. Suddenly a seal rose in front of us, and over us flew continually ivory-gulls and fulmars and kittiwakes. Little auks we also saw, and some Ross's gulls, and a couple of terns. There was no want of animal life here, nor of food when we should require it. "We found open water, broader and broader, as we paddled on our way beside the wall of ice; but it would not clear so that we could see something of our surroundings. The mist still hung obstinately over it. "Our course at first lay west to north (magnetic); but the land always trended more and more to the west and southwest; the expanse of water grew greater, and soon it widened out to a large sea, stretching in a southwesterly direction. A breeze sprang up from the north-northeast, and there was considerable motion, which was not pleasant, as in our double craft the seas continually washed up between the two and wetted us. We put in towards evening and pitched the tent on the shore-ice, and just as we did so it began to rain, so that it was high time to be under a roof. "Friday, August 9th. Yesterday morning we had again to drag the sledges with the kayaks over some ice which had drifted in front of our camping-ground, and during this operation I managed to fall into the water and get wet. It was with difficulty we finally got through and out into open water. After a while we again found our way closed, and were obliged to take to hauling over some floes, but after this we had good open water the whole day. It was a northeasterly wind which had set the ice towards the land, and it was lucky we had got so far, as behind us, to judge by the atmosphere, the sea was much blocked. The mist hung over the land so that we saw little of it. According as we advanced we were able to hold a more southerly course, and, the wind being nearly on the quarter, we set sail about 1 o'clock, and continued sailing all day till we stopped yesterday evening. Our sail, however, was interrupted once when it was necessary to paddle round an ice-point north of where we are now; the contrary current was so strong that it was as much as we could do to make way against it, and it was only after considerable exertion that we succeeded in doubling the point. We have seen little of the land we are skirting up to this, on account of the mist; but as far as I can make out it consists of islands. First there was a large island covered with an ice-sheet; then west of it a smaller one, on which are the two crags of rock which first made us aware of the vicinity of land; next came a long fjord or sound, with massive shore-ice in it; and then a small, low