The route laid down for the expedition was along the western coast of Greenland and as far through Robeson Channel, which divides Grinnel Land from Greenland, as it was possible to get. Disko Bay, half-way up the Greenland coast, was the spot where the _Alert_ and _Discovery_ were to part company with the _Valorous_. They entered the Bay on July 4, having had, on the voyage to the North, the peculiar experience of chasing and overtaking a season. When they left Portsmouth at the end of May, summer was well in; but when they arrived at Disko Bay they found that the mild weather which forms the spring had not yet set in sufficiently to melt all the winter's snows. So that they had travelled quicker than the summer, having started after it had begun in England, and arrived in Greenland before it was due. The early spring flowers were just commencing to bloom on the slopes around Disko, wherever the snow had melted, while higher up on the hills, where the winter's snow still lay, the explorers had an opportunity of looking upon that curious phenomenon, red snow. A minute animalcule (_Protococcus nivalis_) generates in the frozen covering of the earth, and increases so rapidly and in such vast numbers that it gives to its cold white habitat the hue of its own microscopic body. Another minute creature also breeds in enormous numbers in these bleak regions, the mosquito, which one usually associates with dense tropical jungles and fever-breeding swamps. All along the Greenland coast, wherever there is a pool of fresh water which thaws from the ice-grip, the larvæ of the mosquito appear in swarms in the spring, and, very shortly after, the full-fledged insect emerges in the utmost vigour of irritating stinging life. As the time is short between the period when the ice melts and when the water freezes again, the Greenland mosquito has to be active to work out his life mission before he is frozen off, and the skin of all visitors to his locality gives ample evidence how well he utilises his opportunities. In addition to taking on board the surplus stores from the _Valorous_, the two Arctic ships also took on board teams of dogs for sledging purposes. Fifty-five in all were shipped, their quarters being situated on the main deck, where they were necessarily cramped for room, and, what was worse from their point of view, were unable to get at one another's throats owing to their being chained to bolts. Consequently they kept up a constant chorus of snarls and yaps, varied now and again with a howl as one or another received a remonstrating kick from a sailor. This interminable uproar was explained by the Eskimo dog driver, who was also taken on board, as being due to the fact that most of the dogs were strangers to one another, and no one was as yet the properly constituted king.