st, and now it cannot
go fast enough to please you. And then so addicted to tobacco--you
wrap yourself in clouds of smoke to indulge in your everlasting
day dreams. Hark to the south wind, how it whistles in the rigging;
it is quite inspiriting to listen to it. On Midsummer-eve we ought,
of course, to have had a bonfire as usual, but from my diary it does
not seem to have been the sort of weather for it.

"Saturday, June 23, 1894.

"'Mid the shady vales and the leafy trees,
How sweet the approach of the summer breeze!
When the mountain slopes in the sunlight gleam,
And the eve of St. John comes in like a dream.

The north wind continues with sleet. Gloomy weather. Drifting
south. 81 deg. 43' north latitude; that is, 9' southward since Monday.

"I have seen many Midsummer-eves under different skies, but never
such a one as this. So far, far from all that one associates with this
evening. I think of the merriment round the bonfires at home, hear the
scraping of the fiddle, the peals of laughter, and the salvoes of the
guns, with the echoes answering from the purple-tinted heights. And
then I look out over this boundless, white expanse into the fog
and sleet and the driving wind. Here is truly no trace of midsummer
merriment. It is a gloomy lookout altogether! Midsummer is past--and
now the days are shortening again, and the long night of winter
approaching, which, maybe, will find us as far advanced as it left us.

"I was busily engaged with my examination of the salinity of the
sea-water this afternoon when Mogstad stuck his head in at the door
and said that a bear must be prowling about in the neighborhood. On
returning after dinner to their work at the great hummock, where they
were busy making an ice-cellar for fresh meat, [56] the men found
bear-tracks which were not there before. I put on my snow-shoes
and went after it. But what terrible going it had been the last
few days! Soft slush, in which the snow-shoes sink helplessly. The
bear had come from the west right up to the Fram, had stopped and
inspected the work that was going on, had then retreated a little,
made a considerable detour, and set off eastward at its easy, shambling
gait, without deigning to pay any further attention to such a trifle
as a ship. It had rummaged about in every hole and corner where there
seemed to be any chance of finding food, and had rooted in the snow
after anything the dogs had left, or wha