Physically we believed ourselves in fine trim. Every moment of sunlight had been used by us for exercise. We had been on a forced diet of penguin meat, and had undergone the baking treatment to bring our strength to the maximum. We were, however, far from normal, though our ambitions, like the spring flow of rivers, were no longer to be confined to ordinary bounds. Our real difficulty began when we left the large old fields to cross the young ice of leads. Here were huge ridges of pressure-lines all nearly impassable, and the little valley-like spaces between were covered by beds of dry snow in very small crystals, over which a sledge runs about as easily as over sand. Another disheartening series of regions, were the sites of recent leads and lakes over which it was necessary to pass. These were sheets of water thinly covered with ice from three to six inches in thickness, and coated by a most beautiful fur of hoar-frost. The nearness of this to the level of the water, and the great difference between the temperature of the water and that of the air kept it constantly humid. An evaporation rose from this new ice as if water were boiling under a screen. The mixture of water with cold snow offers a surface over which a sledge slides with the greatest difficulty. There are several methods of overcoming this resistance. One method is to shoe the sledge with ivory or whalebone, or what I like fully as well, penguin skin, but for this we were not prepared at the time. At a distance of about a mile from the ship we stopped to take compass bearings of her and the surrounding icebergs or landmarks. The scene here was a picture for the gods. In the north the sun, a great yellow ball of fire, was gliding westward along the horizon, laying beams of gold on the endless sheets of white of the pack. The moon, nearly full, a bright globe of frosted silver, floated high in the eastern heavens. The sky was, here and there, thinly veiled by stratus clouds formed by the ever-present microscopic specks of snow which float about in the antarctic atmosphere. The colours above were not rich but restful, and on the frozen bosom of the sea there was a charm which cannot be made to flow under my pen. The surface was everywhere rough and ragged, the line of horizon in some places looking not unlike a profile of ruined, marble buildings. The many, rough edges of blue hummocks, the thin plains of green and yellow, young ice, the clear-cut edges of icebergs, with walls assuming various colours, according to the amount and kind of light absorbed, made a dreamy, fairy-like scene. [Illustration: The Midnight Sun Over the Pack-ice.]