11. After crossing over the Sonklar-Glacier and measuring its slight inclination of 1° 6′, we climbed an elevation to ascertain the most promising route for penetrating in a northerly direction; and none seemed better suited than that which lay over its back, which seemed free from crevasses. But we looked in vain for the fancied paradise of the interior, which had existed only in our desire to clothe in glowing colours the Land, from which we had been so long held back. The true character, however, of Kaiser Franz-Josef Land, so far as it could be explored in this and the following sledge expeditions, will be the subject of the next chapter. The accompanying sketch represents a block of snow, about the height of a man, at the foot of the Sonklar-Glacier, to which the winds had given a fanlike shape. In the afternoon, after inspecting the stakes which we had fixed for measuring the motion of the glacier, we came back to the tent and began our return march to Cape Tegetthoff and the ship. A cutting wind compelled us to make constant efforts against frost-bites. With a heavy creaking noise the sledge was dragged over the hard snow, and to our reduced strength it seemed to be laden with a double load. The night is generally the hardest part of such expeditions, and our camping out during the night under the cliffs of Cape Tegetthoff was especially bitter. Happy was he who, exhausted by the labour of dragging, fell asleep at once. As usual, we dug a deep hole in the snow and loosened it as much as possible, so that we might profit by its property of being one of the worst conductors of heat. In a short time the inside of the tent was covered with rime frost, and we ourselves with ice. The tongue only seemed to recover its former mobility with those who bewailed their loss of knives, stockings, gloves—yea, of everything, even their place in the tent. They ate their portion of bear’s flesh much as if they had been chloroformed, and dropping asleep in their stiffened icy coat of mail, they were awoke by its gradual thawing, to reiterate without cessation how cold it was; a fact which no one present was prepared to dispute. The alcohol thermometer stood at -56° F. (-48° on board the ship), and when the warmth produced by the exercise we had taken and by the effects of supper was gone, the feeling of cold was so intense that it seemed far more probable that we should be frozen to death than that we should sleep. The cook therefore received orders to brew some strong grog, and forthwith six spirit-flames burnt under the kettle filled with snow; but to make snow of such extreme coldness boil quickly we should have had to place the kettle over Vesuvius itself in the height of an eruption. [Illustration: BLOCK OF SNOW.]