18. No kind of snow opposes such hindrances to sledge-dragging as the snow with the thermometer not much below freezing-point, for at this temperature it balls. This impediment we now encountered. The air, too, became oppressively heavy; land and sky were suddenly overspread with darkness; and, from behind thunderlike clouds, red rays of the sun fell on the conical mountains of Kane Island. Falls of snow, calms, and violent gusts of wind rapidly succeeded one another, and just before we erected our tent it again became clear. Far to the north we saw two white masses—Becker and Archduke-Rainer Islands, and an extensive inlet—Back Inlet; but only within Austria Sound could we count on pursuing our journey northwards without making any détours. On Easter Monday, April 7th (the thermometer varying between 9° and 19° below zero (C.)), we approached Becker Island; but the atmosphere was on this day so moist and thick, though without mist in the proper sense, that its existence might be asserted or disputed according as the light changed; and it was only when we were not further off than 100 paces that we could be positive of the existence of land, rising gently at an angle of 1° 7′. Over this ice-covered island we now dragged, and, full of expectation, mounted its highest point. To the north lay an indescribable waste, more utterly desolate than anything I had ever seen, even in the Arctic regions, interspersed with snow-covered islands, all, big and little, of the same low, rounded shape. The whole, at a distance, presented the appearance of a chaos of icehills and icebergs scattered over a frozen sea. One thing only in this view gave us much satisfaction. Austria Sound still stretched uninterruptedly towards the north. Could we have forgotten how the _Tegetthoff_ had drifted towards Franz-Josef Land, that Sound would have seemed to us the true road to the Pole. Nor could we doubt that in the immediate north open water would be found, for in no other way could we interpret the indications we had observed in the course of the last few days—the great moisture and high temperature, the dark colour of the northern sky, the frequent flights of Auks, and Divers, grey and white Gulls, which flew from the north southward, or _vice versâ_.