It was undeniably a sudden transition to come straight from our long inert life in our winter lair, where one's scientific interests found little enough stimulus, right into the midst of this scientific oasis, where there was plenty of opportunity for work, where books and all necessary apparatus were at hand, and where one could employ one's leisure moments in discussing with men of similar tastes all sorts of scientific questions connected with the Arctic zone. In the botanist of the expedition, Mr. Harry Fisher, I found a man full of the warmest interest in the fauna and flora of the polar regions, and the exhaustive investigations which his residence here has enabled him to make into the plant-life and animal-life (especially the former) of the locality, both by sea and land, will certainly augment in a most valuable degree our knowledge of its biological conditions. I shall not easily forget the many pleasant talks in which he communicated to me his discoveries and observations. They were all eagerly absorbed by a mind long deprived of such sustenance. I felt like a piece of parched soil drinking in rain after a drouth of a whole year. But other diversions were also available. If my brain grew fatigued with unwonted labor, I could set off with Jackson for the top of the moraine to shoot auks, which swarmed under the basalt walls. They roosted in hundreds and hundreds on the shelves and ledges above us; at other places the kittiwakes brooded on their nests. It was a refreshing scene of life and activity. As we stood up there at a height of 500 feet, and could look far out over the sea, the auks flew in swarms backward and forward over our heads, and every now and then we would knock over one or two as they passed. Every time a gun was fired the report echoed through all the rocky clefts, and thousands of birds flew shrieking down from the ledges. It seemed as though a blast of wind had swept a great dust-cloud down from the crest above; but little by little they returned to their nests, many of them meanwhile falling to our guns. Jackson had here a capital larder, and he made ample use of it. Almost every day he was up under the rock shooting auks, which formed a daily dish at dinner. In the autumn great stores of them were laid in to last through the winter. At other times Jackson and Blomqvist would go up and gather eggs. They dragged a ladder up with them, and by its aid Jackson clambered up the perpendicular cliffs. This egg-hunting among the loose basalt cliffs, where the stones were perpetually slipping away from under one, appeared to me such dare-devil work that I was chary in taking part in it. Far be it from me to deny, however, that the eggs made delicious eating, whether we had them soft-boiled for breakfast or made into pancakes for dinner. It was remarkable how entirely I had got out of training for climbing in precipitous places. I well remember that the first time I