his vessel and continue his
route as the whalers of Godhaven had told him he would be able to do.

On the seventeenth he arrived at Barrow's Straits, and made all the
speed he could; but on the nineteenth, as he was about to enter Melville
Sound, he was again blocked in by the ice.

At first he patiently accepted the situation, waiting for it to break
up; but day succeeded to day and still this did not happen.

There were, however, many sources of amusement open to the voyagers.
They were near the coast and supplied with everything that could render
their life comfortable in that latitude. They could take sleigh-rides
and see in the distance the whales enjoying their diversions. The summer
solstice was approaching. Since the fifteenth the occupants of the
"Alaska" had beheld a new and astonishing spectacle, even for Norwegians
and the natives of southern Sweden; it was the sun at midnight touching
the horizon without disappearing and then mounting again in the sky. In
these high latitudes and desolate coasts the star of day describes in
twenty-four hours a complete circle in space. The light, it is true, is
pale and languishing, objects lose their perfect shape, and all nature
has a shadowy appearance. One realizes profoundly how far he is removed
from the world, and how near he is to the pole. The cold, however, was
not extreme. The temperature did not fall more than four or five degrees
below zero, and the air was sometimes so mild that they could hardly
believe that they were in the center of the arctic zone.

But those novel surrounding were not sufficient to satisfy Erik, or make
him lose sight of the supreme object which had brought them there. He
had not come to herbalize like Mr. Malarius, who returned every evening
more and more delighted with his explorations, both of the country and
of its unknown plants, which he added to his collection; nor to enjoy
with Dr. Schwaryencrona and Mr. Bredejord the novelty of the sights
which nature offered to them in these polar regions. He wanted to find
Nordenskiold and Patrick O'Donoghan--to fulfill a sacred duty while he
discovered, perhaps, the secret of his birth. This was why he sought
untiringly to break the circle of ice which hemmed them in. He made
excursions with his sleigh and on his snow-shoes, reconnoitered in every
direction for ten days, but it was all in vain. At the west, as well as
the north and east, the banks of ice remained firm.

It was the 20th of