“Beating them off while on the march is impossible, for the damp cloth freezes at once to a lump of ice, making the eyes insupportably cold. The simple bandage, on the other hand, does not save one from the steady burning pain, which acts like needle-pricks. Opening the eye for a moment is not to be thought of. The blind are obliged to pull with the others, as the laden sledge cannot be moved but by our united strength. “As a rule, we break up about 5 a.m. The thin black coffee is taken with some ice-cold bread-dust, which effectually destroys all its warming properties, mixed into it like a mash, and then follows laborious packing up of the clothes, in order to be prepared for all weathers. The frozen boots must first be thawed with the hands, and the folds taken out, the tent freed from snow, and beaten until pliable. The sleeping-sack receives the same treatment, which, as a sign of our disgust and its daily increasing weight from the ice, we named ‘the Walrus.’ “The soaked seal-skin clothing freezes at once in the air, and damp condenses on the hair in frost-blossoms. One or the other rubs his face with scraped snow to refresh his eyes—a novel kind of washing, in default of water, though with the slightest breath of wind his hands are in danger of freezing. After every snowstorm, tent and sledge have to be dug out, and the contents cleaned with difficulty. “All this business occupies about two hours, when the traces are taken up with great satisfaction, as a long-looked-for release from the pain of the nightly couch. The sledge is loosened from its frozen position, and the journey continued, which, after twenty-three days, brought us to 77° of latitude, the most northerly point ever reached on the east coast of Greenland.” The coast along which this sledge-journey was made was found to be much broken up, and the opinion was formed that the land might possibly resolve itself into a group of islands. The ice having broken up, the _Germania_ left its winter harbour on 22nd July, and steamed northwards. In 75° 29′ it was stopped by ice, and had to return to the south. Kaiser Franz-Joseph’s Fjord was afterwards explored; and on the 17th of August the return home to Germany was begun. By the 25th of August they were clear of the ice.