At 6 P.M. to-day “Fram” steamed off and disappeared along Amsterdamöen’s east coast. “Hobby” made ready for sailing and at eight o’clock we followed. To begin with we kept to the same course as “Fram.” The weather was not of the best. Visibility was fairly good, but the sky was covered with gray, low-lying clouds, while the air was damp and heavy. A nor’-easter made our position on deck anything but comfortable, but the mere fact that we were moving engendered a satisfactory feeling and we sat up late into the night. Leaving Virgo-havn we got a good chance to study, on Spitzbergen’s mainland, how the glaciers here in the north have diminished in recent years. In one of the dales we can see the remainder of a glacier which not so many years ago reached right down to the sea. Now there is hardly a small ice hillock left of it. The neighboring glaciers have also shrunk and no longer fill the dales as they did formerly. We remember what our friends in King’s Bay told us, that the large glaciers in the Bay have moved 1,500–2,000 meters further out than they were ten years ago, when the coal miners first started to work. During the trip through the sound we are accompanied part of the way by a young seal, which unconcernedly swims by the side of the vessel regarding us curiously with black shining eyes. Our sporting instincts awaken--we have no intention of shooting a young seal, but the sight of it reminds us that there will be plenty of sport further north, where at this time of year seals are plentiful. It is not impossible that we may also bag a polar bear or two. “Hobby” in the meantime has passed Singing-Bird Island, which could hardly have borne a more fitting name. Town dwellers who are on board the vessel, to whom fifty or sixty sparrows appear as a _crowd_ of birds, have always listened with skepticism to the tales told of flocks of birds so dense that they obliterate the sun. As we pass the Island we get a proof that these tales have not been exaggerated. I admit that there was no sun to obliterate, but round the high Island we can see flocks of auk flying in such numbers that they look like big black thunder clouds driving before the wind. We turn into the sound, passing Norskeöene and lose sight of Amsterdamöen’s double-peaked top. In a small opening between Singing-Bird Island and Cloven-Cliff Island we catch sight of “Fram.” It is lying still, and it would appear that the officers on board have begun their hydrographic work. They are quickly lost to sight as we pass Outer-Norskeöene, where we see thousands of capercailzies flying backwards and forwards.