l far
over midnight. But through it all runs the same sensation of longing
and emptiness, which must not be noted. Ah, but at times there is no
holding it aloof, and the hands sink down without will or strength--so
weary, so unutterably weary.

"Ah! life's peace is said to be found by holy men in the desert. Here,
indeed, there is desert enough; but peace--of that I know nothing. I
suppose it is the holiness that is lacking.

"Wednesday, July 18th. Went on excursion with Blessing in the forenoon
to collect specimens of the brown snow and ice, and gather seaweed
and diatoms in the water. The upper surface of the floes is nearly
everywhere of a dirty brown color, or, at least, this sort of ice
preponderates, while pure white floes, without any traces of a dirty
brown on their surface, are rare. I imagined this brown color must
be due to the organisms I found in the newly-frozen, brownish-red
ice last autumn (October); but the specimens I took to-day consist,
for the most part, of mineral dust mingled with diatoms and other
ingredients of organic origin. [57]

"Blessing collected several specimens on the upper surface of the ice
earlier in the summer, and came to the same conclusions. I must look
further into this, in order to see whether all this brown dust is of
a mineral nature, and consequently originates from the land. [58] We
found in the lanes quantities of algae like those we had often found
previously. There were large accumulations of them in nearly every
little channel. We could also see that a brown surface layer spread
itself on the sides of the floes far down into the water. This is due
to an alga that grows on the ice. There were also floating in the water
a number of small viscid lumps, some white, some of a yellowish red
color; and of these I collected several. Under the microscope they
all appeared to consist of accumulations of diatoms, among which,
moreover, were a number of larger cellular organisms of a very
characteristic appearance. [59] All of these diatomous accumulations
kept at a certain depth, about a yard below the surface of the water;
in some of the small lanes they appeared in large masses. At the same
depth the above-named alga seemed especially to flourish, while parts
of it rose up to the surface. It was evident that these accumulations
of diatoms and alga remained floating exactly at the depth where the
upper stratum of fresh water rests on the sea-water. The water on
the surface wa