use of bread-stuff was especially felt, and the almost exclusive, use of flesh produced diarrhœa and general debility. Nothing is more prejudicial to those engaged in extended sledge journeys than great exertion with insufficient sleep. The urgent reasons we had for losing no time in order that we might return as soon as possible to the ship, constrained us to depart from the rule of a ten hours’ sleep to a seven hours’ march on sledge journeys. In consequence of our persistent adherence to this principle during our return to Europe after abandoning the _Tegetthoff_, the labours incident to it were far more easily performed. We did not lose but gained strength; and some of us even grew stouter during it. [Illustration: CUTTING UP THE BEARS.] 21. On the 8th of April we continued our journey, making an early start as usual. Our track lay between countless hummocks, some of which were forty feet high, while the depressions between them were filled with deep layers of snow, and as we advanced into Rawlinson Sound, high icebergs towered over a monotonous chaos of ice-forms. The ice resembled that which surrounded the _Tegetthoff_ during our first winter, and indicated a periodical, perhaps even an annual, breaking up. There was nothing, however, to entitle us to infer that Rawlinson Sound was navigable in summer. Like many of the passages of the northern coast of North America, Austria and Rawlinson Sounds are too narrow for the purposes of navigation. They are, however, well calculated for sledge travelling. For some time we made use of our sledge-sail; but when the wind shifted to E.S.E., it drove the sledge so much from its true course, that we took it down. Our noses had become so susceptible, that we were glad to put on our wind-protectors to save them from frost-bite. Then followed snow-storms, alternating with brilliant sunshine which, however, illuminated, partially only, some reaches of the hummocky ice, while the distant land lay in shadow. It cost us excessive labour to get the sledge on; we had occasionally to dig a lane for it, and we ran some risk of breaking it. Our advance was one continual zig-zag, due to the confused character of the ice on which we travelled and the untrustworthiness of the compass in high latitudes. It seemed too, as if the declination of the magnetic needle had considerably diminished since we left the ship. Our labours were diversified by the visit of a bear, who, when we first observed him, was standing on the top of one of the many ice-hummocks about 300 paces distant. He then approached us, as was usually the case, under the wind, and we at once drew up to receive him. He took no notice of the bread we had laid down to gain his attention, but still pressed on till he received three bullets in his head. Notwithstanding this he ran for about seventy yards and then fell. To make sure, another bullet was fired into his body, and thinking him dead, we forthwith began to