breakfast, but we could not keep up this strenuous work; an observer would have noticed at once that he had a number of worn-out people before him. The clang of the spades got slower, the rest-intervals longer and longer till in the end we stood quite still and stared at each other. It seemed an impossibility to get the snow shoveled aside in a reasonable time. Whilst we stood discussing it, Omdal walked up and down in the snow. It was only a chance that he did so, but a chance which brought about important results. “See,” he shouted suddenly, “this is what we can do instead of shoveling.” The place where he had trekked was quite hard and with a little frost would give a splendid surface. In the afternoon we started our great trek. Foot by foot of the track of soft wet snow was trodden into a solid road. It was still thawing, but we knew that if it turned frosty it would become a perfect track--and it was only natural to expect that frost would come. To make the surface even we had to remove long and high stretches of ice-formation containing tons upon tons of ice. On the 14th of June as we laid down our tools I don’t think I exaggerate when I say that all in all we had removed 500 tons of ice and snow. That day we made two starts, 6 and 7, but the foundation was still too soft as we had had no constant frost. Certainly the temperature that day had been as low as -12° c., but then it rose immediately after to 0° again. It was impossible to get up sufficient speed to rise, the machine sank down into the snow, and in a number of places dragged the whole of the underlying snow with it. Now will it freeze or not?