to the knee, sometimes to the waist. The men broke down one by one, strength and appetite failed them, and every motion of their swollen and stiffened limbs was an agony. They would haul the sledge five or six yards forward, and then stop for want of breath. With fifty miles of bottomless snow before them, it was no wonder some of them began to think their prospects hopeless, and wanted to be left behind rather than burden the others with their weight. But the sight of the dog-sledge put new life in the party. Its four strong men and six plucky dogs soon got them over their difficulties. Now they were safe and close to the ship, and knees grew straighter than they had been for many a day; those who could walk at all required an order to keep them on the dog-sledge. There was amongst them an ex-member of the “Bulldog” sledge, who had impressed himself specially on his former sledge-mates by one peculiar trait—he never could see a joke till hours after it was made, and then his sudden roars of laughter would sometimes wake the whole crew from their first sleep. The poor fellow was now amongst the worst, but he insisted on being helped into the drag-belts, and staggered alongside the ship in harness. Thus ended the spring sledging. For another month hunting parties scoured the land, and two sledges tried to find an overland route to the “Discovery” in case our ship should suffer in the disruption of the pack; but so far as the “Alert” was concerned, the exploring work of the year was over. Of the “Discovery’s” proceedings we yet knew little. We had heard that Lady Franklin Sound had proved a mere inlet. No news had reached us from the North Greenland detachment, but the shore that we could see from our mast-heads and from the hills of Floeberg Beach was long and deeply indented, and its extreme limit at Cape Britannia was far to the east, but little to the north.