There is now considerable life, but we must go far to find it. The leads are several miles from the ship. When we get to them they seem like huge endless rivers, winding through a white plain. On the banks are lines of pressure ridges, from two to twenty feet high. In these spaces of water are some freed icebergs and a few small pans of old ice; but the low temperature soon covers every bit of open sea with an even sheet of new ice, through which the whales and seals must force their blow-holes. Nature favours them by breaks here and there; but the steady, calm, cold weather of the present is opposed to much ice-movement, which accounts for the few breaks. All of the seals which have been seen since the months of April and May are crab-eaters (_Lobodon Carcinophaga_). They seem to travel in groups of from two to ten, and they follow the leads southward after every storm. The whales do the same, and when the new ice forms, and the retreat is cut off, they seek the regions about the icebergs where the retarding influence of the bergs in the drift causes enough commotion to keep spaces of water open. Failing in this, they break through the new ice by forcing their heads through it. It is a curious fact that, up to the present, we have seen only finback whales (_Balaenoptera Sibbaldii_) in the pack, but now we find an occasional bottlenose (_Megaptera Boops_) in the little lakes and streams. The convenience, which the whale and seal holes offer, made us think that perhaps penguins might utilise them as breathing spaces, but this never happened so far as our experience went. Penguins, being better able to move over the ice, have a wider range of habitation, and they always use open leads. [Illustration: An Old Wind-swept Hummock.] [Illustration: The Sand-like Drift Snow.]