"We started yesterday about half-past eight in the morning, and stopped about five in the afternoon. After dinner the northeasterly wind, which we have had the whole time, suddenly became stronger, and the sky overcast. We welcomed it with joy, for we saw in it the sign of a probable change of weather and an end to this perpetual cold and brightness. I do not think we deceived ourselves either. Yesterday evening the temperature had risen to -29.2° Fahr. (-34° C.), and we had the best night in the bag we have had for a long time. Just now, as I am getting the breakfast ready, I see that it is clear again, and the sun is shining through the tent wall. "The ice we are now travelling over seems, on the whole, to be old; but sometimes we come across tracts, of considerable width, of uneven new ice, which must have been pressed up a considerable time. I cannot account for it in any other way than by supposing it to be ice from great open pools which must have formed here at one time. We have traversed pools of this description, with level ice on them, several times." That day I took a meridian observation, which, however, did not make us farther north than 85° 30'. I could not understand this; thought that we must be in latitude 86°, and, therefore, supposed there must be something wrong with the observation. "Saturday, March 30th. Yesterday was Tycho Brahe's day. At first we found much uneven ice, and had to strike a devious route to get through it, so that our day's march did not amount to much, although we kept at it a long time. At the end of it, however, and after considerable toil, we found ourselves on splendid flat ice, more level than it had been for a long time. At last, then, we had come on some more of the good old kind, and could not complain of some rubble and snow-drifts here and there; but then we were stopped by some ugly pressure-ridges of the worst kind, formed by the packing of enormous blocks. The last ridge was the worst of all, and before it yawned a crack in the thick ice about 12 feet deep. When the first sledge was going over all the dogs fell in and had to be hauled up again. One of them--'Klapperslangen'--slipped his harness and ran away. As the next sledge was going over it fell in bodily, but happily was not smashed to atoms, as it might have been. We had to unload it entirely in order to get it up again, and then reload, all of which took up a great deal of time. Then, too, the dogs had to be thrown down and dragged up on the other side. With the third sledge we managed better, and after we had gone a little way farther the runaway dog came back. At last we reached a camping-ground, pitched our tent, and found that the thermometer showed -45.4° Fahr. (-43° C.). Disentangling dog-traces in this temperature with one's bare, frost-bitten, almost skinless hands is desperate work. But finally we were in our dear bag, with the 'Primus' singing cozily, when, to crown our misfortunes, I discovered that it would not burn.