ly after this was
changed to a sea-monster, resembling a walrus-head, as large as a
mountain. This got life and motion, and finally sank all at once to
the head of a common walrus, which lay on a piece of ice in the
neighbourhood of the boat; the white tusks formed the snow-fields
and the dark-brown round head the mountain. Scarce was this illusion
gone when one of the men cried out "Land right a head--high land!"
We now all saw before us a high Alpine region, with mountain peaks
and glaciers, but this too sank a moment afterwards all at once to a
common ice-border, blackened with earth. In the spring of 1873
Palander and I with nine men made a sledge journey round North-east
Land. In the course of this journey a great many bears were seen and
killed. When a bear was seen while we were dragging our sledges
forward, the train commonly stood still, and, not to frighten the
bear, all the men concealed themselves behind the sledges, with the
exception of the marksman, who, squatting down in some convenient
place, waited till his prey should come sufficiently within range to
be killed with certainty. It happened once during foggy weather on
the ice at Wahlenberg Bay that the bear that was expected and had
been clearly seen by all of us, instead of approaching with his
usual supple zigzag movements, and with his ordinary attempts to
nose himself to a sure insight into the fitness of the foreigners
for food, just as the marksman took aim, spread out gigantic wings
and flew away in the form of a small ivory gull. Another time during
the same sledge journey we heard from the tent in which we rested
the cook, who was employed outside, cry out: "A bear! a great bear!
No! a reindeer, a very little reindeer!" The same instant a
well-directed shot was fired, and the bear-reindeer was found to be
a very small fox, which thus paid with its life for the honour of
having for some moments played the part of a big animal. From these
accounts it may be seen how difficult navigation among drift-ice
must be in unknown waters.

On the two occasions on which the vessel was anchored to ice-floes
the trawl-net was used, and the hempen tangles. The net was drawn
forward slowly with the ice which was drifting to the north-west
before a fresh S.E. breeze which was blowing at the time. The yield
of the trawling was extraordinarily abundant; large asterids,
crinoids, sponges, holothuria, a gigantic sea-spider (Pycnogonid),
masses of worms, crustacea