3. The second summer was gone. It had come in with the hope and promise of liberation, and patiently had we awaited this result. With sad resignation we now looked forward to another winter. But once more it was to be seen, in our case, how great is the power of men to endure dangers and hardships, when these come upon them not suddenly but gradually. A few months ago, the thought that we should be prisoners on the ice, bound to our floe, for a second winter, would have been unendurable. But now that the intolerable thought had become a stern fact, we accepted and endured it. But often as we went on deck and cast our eyes over the wastes, from which there was no escape, the despairing thought recurred, that next year we should have to return home—without having achieved anything, or at most with a narrative of a long drift on the ice. Not a man among us believed in the possibility of discoveries, though discoveries beyond our utmost hopes lay immediately before us. 4. A memorable day was the 30th August 1873, in 79° 43′ Lat. and 59° 33′ E. Long. That day brought a surprise, such as only the awakening to a new life can produce. About midday, as we were leaning on the bulwarks of the ship and scanning the gliding mists, through which the rays of the sun broke ever and anon, a wall of mist, lifting itself up suddenly, revealed to us, afar off in the north-west, the outlines of bold rocks, which in a few minutes seemed to grow into a radiant Alpine land! At first we all stood transfixed and hardly believing what we saw. Then, carried away by the reality of our good fortune, we burst forth into shouts of joy—“Land, Land, Land at last!” There was now not a sick man on board the _Tegetthoff_. The news of the discovery spread in an instant. Every one rushed on deck, to convince himself with his own eyes, that the expedition was not after all a failure—there before us lay the prize that could not be snatched from us. Yet not by our own action, but through the happy caprice of our floe and as in a dream had we won it, but when we thought of the floe, drifting without intermission, we felt with redoubled pain, that we were at the mercy of its movements. As yet we had secured no winter harbour, from which the exploration of the strange land could be successfully undertaken. For the present, too, it was not within the verge of possibility to reach and visit it. If we had left our floe, we should have been cut off and lost. It was only under the influence of the first excitement that we made a rush over our ice-field, although we knew that numberless fissures made it impossible to reach the land. But, difficulties notwithstanding, when we ran to the edge of our floe, we beheld from a ridge of ice the mountains and glaciers of the mysterious land. Its valleys seemed to our fond imagination clothed with green pastures, over which herds of reindeer roamed in undisturbed enjoyment of their liberty, and far from all foes.