quiet as the ice itself;
and yet it is wonderful how quickly the time passes. The equinox has
come, the nights are beginning to turn dark, and at noon the sun is
only 9 degrees above the horizon. I pass the day busily here in the
work cabin, and often feel as if I were sitting in my study at home,
with all the comforts of civilization round me. If it were not for
the separation, one could be as well off here as there. Sometimes I
forget where I am. Not infrequently in the evening, when I have been
sitting absorbed in work, I have jumped up to listen when the dogs
barked, thinking to myself, who can be coming? Then I remember that
I am not at home, but drifting out in the middle of the frozen Polar
Sea, at the commencement of the second long Arctic night.

"The temperature has been down to 1.4 deg. Fahr. below zero (-17 deg.
C.) to-day; winter is coming on fast. There is little drift just now,
and yet we are in good spirits. It was the same last autumn equinox;
but how many disappointments we have had since then! How terrible
it was in the later autumn when every calculation seemed to fail,
as we drifted farther and farther south! Not one bright spot on our
horizon! But such a time will never come again. There may still be
great relapses; there may be slow progress for a time; but there
is no doubt as to the future; we see it dawning bright in the west,
beyond the Arctic night.

"Sunday, September 23d. It was a year yesterday since we made fast
for the first time to the great hummock in the ice. Hansen improved
the occasion by making a chart of our drift for the year. It does not
look so very bad, though the distance is not great; the direction is
almost exactly what I had expected. But more of this to-morrow; it
is so late that I cannot write about it now. The nights are turning
darker and darker; winter is settling down upon us.

"Tuesday, September 25th. I have been looking more carefully at the
calculation of our last year's drift. If we reckon from the place where
we were shut in on the 22d of September last year to our position
on the 22d of September this year, the distance we have drifted is
189 miles, equal to 3 deg. 9' latitude. Reckoning from the same place,
but to the farthest north point we reached in summer (July 16th),
makes the drift 225 miles, or 3 deg. 46'. But if we reckon from our
most southern point in the autumn of last year (November 7th) to our
most northern point this summer, then the drift i