The ice continued to become more even during the following days, and our marches often amounted to 14 miles or more in the day. Now and then a misfortune might happen which detained us, as, for instance, one day a sharp spike of ice which was standing up cut a hole in a sack of fish flour, and all the delicious food ran out. It took us more than an hour to collect it all again and repair the damages. Then the odometer got broken through being jammed in some uneven ice, and it took some hours to mend it by a process of lashing. But on we went northward, often over great, wide ice-plains which seemed as if they must stretch right to the Pole. Sometimes it happened that we passed through places where the ice was "unusually massive, with high hummocks, so that it looked like undulating country covered with snow." This was undoubtedly very old ice, which had drifted in the Polar Sea for a long time on its way from the Siberian Sea to the east coast of Greenland, and which had been subjected year after year to severe pressure. High hummocks and mounds are thus formed, which summer after summer are partially melted by the rays of the sun, and again in the winters covered with great drifts of snow, so that they assume forms which resemble ice-hills rather than piles of sea-ice resulting from upheaval. Wednesday, March 20th, my diary says: "Beautiful weather for travelling in, with fine sunsets; but somewhat cold, particularly in the bag, at nights (it was -41.8° and -43.6° Fahr., or -41° and -42° C.). The ice appears to be getting more even the farther we advance, and in some places it is like travelling over 'inland ice.' If this goes on the whole thing will be done in no time." That day we lost our odometer, and as we did not find it out till some time afterwards, and I did not know how far we might have to go back, I thought it was not worth while to return and look for. It was the cause, however, of our only being able subsequently to guess approximately at the distance we had gone during the day. We had another mishap, too, that day. This was that one of the dogs (it was "Livjægeren") had become so ill that he could not be driven any longer, and we had to let him go loose. It was late in the day before we discovered that he was not with us; he had stopped behind at our camping-ground when we broke up in the morning, and I had to go back after him on snow-shoes, which caused a long delay. "Thursday, March 21st. Nine in the morning, -43.6° Fahr., or -42° C. (Minimum in the night, -47.2° Fahr., or -44° C.) Clear, as it has been every day. Beautiful, bright weather; glorious for travelling in, but somewhat cold at nights, with the quicksilver continually frozen. Patching Finn shoes in this temperature inside the tent, with one's nose slowly freezing away, is not all pure enjoyment.