6. For some time we had been surprised by the appearance of a dark mass of ice, the distance of which prevented us from making a closer acquaintance with it. Our life on the narrow space of our floe had quite assumed the character of that of mere insects, who dwell on the leaf of a tree and care not to know its edges. Excursions of one or two miles were regarded as displaying an extraordinary amount of the spirit of enterprise and discovery. On the 14th some of us pushed on for about four miles to the group of ice just mentioned, and discovered it to be a very large iceberg. Two moraines lay on its broad back. These were the first stones and pieces of rock we had seen for a long time, and so great was our joy at these messengers of land, that we rummaged about among the heaps of rubbish, with as much zeal as if we had found ourselves among the treasures of India. Some of the party found what they fancied to be gold (pyrites), and gravely considered whether they would be able to take a quantity of it back to Dalmatia. Although the glaciers of Novaya Zemlya could not shed icebergs of such magnitude as that on which we now stood, we all held it for certain that it had come from thence. Not one of us had the least presentiment that it could belong to new lands, to which at that time we were near. Even the other icebergs which we discovered in increasing numbers on the following days, did not as yet speak to us the language of a message to fill us with hope and ardour. Our walk to the “dirt iceberg” was an event in our monotonous life, and was often repeated. These expeditions enabled us also to form some conception of the size of our floe, the diameter of which could not be less than six or seven miles. 7. August 18—the birthday of his Majesty our Emperor,—the ship was dressed with flags, the only form left to us of expressing our loyalty. Our dinner was as sumptuous as the circumstances permitted, though fasting would have been more appropriate, as the third day after this was the anniversary of that sad and gloomy day on which we were inclosed in the ice. In order to visit an iceberg which lay to the north-west of us, we ventured beyond our floe for the first time, and passed over a fissure to some drifting ice-floes which lay in the way. A seal lying on the ice was immediately attacked by our dogs, but succeeded after many efforts in reaching its hole. From the top of the iceberg, which was about sixty feet high, we discovered that the few openings in the ice were not navigable “leads,” but isolated holes utterly unconnected, and therefore useless for navigation.