Most Arctic travellers who have gone sledge journeys have complained of the so-called Arctic thirst, and it has been considered an almost unavoidable evil in connection with a long journey across wastes of snow. It is often increased, too, by the eating of snow. I had prepared myself for this thirst, from which we had also suffered severely when crossing Greenland, and had taken with me a couple of india-rubber flasks, which we filled with water every morning from the cooker, and which by carrying in the breast could be protected from the cold. To my great astonishment, however, I soon discovered that the whole day would often pass by without my as much as tasting the water in my flask. As time went by, the less need did I feel to drink during the day, and at last I gave up taking water with me altogether. If a passing feeling of thirst made itself felt, a piece of fresh ice, of which, as a rule, there was always some to be found, was sufficient to dispel it. [12] The reason why we were spared this suffering, which has been one of the greatest hardships of many sledge expeditions, must be attributed in a great measure to our admirable cooking apparatus. By the help of this we were able, with the consumption of a minimum of fuel, to melt and boil so much water every morning that we could drink all we wished. There was even some left over, as a rule, which had to be thrown away. The same thing was generally the case in the evening. "Friday, March 29th. We are grinding on, but very slowly. The ice is only tolerable, and not what I expected from the beginning. There are often great ridges of piled-up ice of dismal aspect, which take up a great deal of time, as one must go on ahead to find a way, and, as a rule, make a greater or less detour to get over them. In addition, the dogs are growing rather slow and slack, and it is almost impossible to get them on. And then this endless disentangling of the hauling-ropes, with their infernal twists and knots, which get worse and worse to undo! The dogs jump over and in between one another incessantly, and no sooner has one carefully cleared the hauling-ropes than they are twisted into a veritable skein again. Then one of the sledges is stopped by a block of ice. The dogs howl impatiently to follow their companions in front; then one bites through a trace and starts off on his own account, perhaps followed by one or two others, and these must be caught and the traces knotted; there is no time to splice them properly, nor would it be a very congenial task in this cold. So we go on when the ice is uneven, and every hour and a half, at least, have to stop and disentangle the traces.