Sometimes we stumbled through slush across ice-hummocks between two and three feet thick. At other times we got into lumbersome ice-boats and were pulled by sailors with feet properly swathed for the purpose. Occasionally the boat would slide into an ice-crack, and, though the passengers remained dry, the wretched men dragging the craft suffered unexpected cold baths. We passed encampments on the ice, with people living calmly there, from whom we learnt that various venturesome travellers, thinking they could cross the frozen belt without proper guides, had started off on foot. Then fog or mist overtook them and they lost their way, or, being fatigued, they sat down to rest and were frozen into their eternal sleep. Others slipped and lost their lives in the ice-cracks. Two or three such deaths were matters of weekly occurrence that severe winter. * * * * * We were met in Christiania at six o’clock in the morning by Dr. Nansen, who came to tell us that our brother’s hand had been saved, and though he was still seriously ill, they hoped all immediate danger was past. We nursed him and finally took him away to the mountains, where there was snow ten feet deep, to recoup after his illness. Our experiences were so delightful that we returned to Norway a couple of years later for the fun of the thing, and I took a number of photographs. The Lady Brilliana Harley must have been at my elbow, I think, as I only did the thing as a joke and to amuse myself at the time. I had found ski so exciting a sport, I wanted others to know about its joys. Strange to say, however, no newspaper would take my photographs of ski. “They had never heard of such a sport, they did not wish to hear of such a sport—one which would never be the slightest interest to English people,” and so on. Who would believe this, when, only fifteen years later, the windows of London sporting outfitters are filled with _ski_ in the winter months, and great numbers of young men and women have tried Skilübling themselves? Do not our English people go out to Switzerland in thousands and tens of thousands every year for this very purpose? While, after all, Norway is preferable in winter. When I took up my pen professionally, I pegged away, and I wrote and wrote and wrote. Other people began to be interested, so I contributed the first snow-shoe articles to the _Encyclopædia of Sport_, and newspapers and magazines galore.