mpossible to get on it a sufficiently stable base for the
magnetical variation instrument. The magnetical observatory was
therefore erected on land of the finest building material any
architect has had at his disposal, namely, large parallelopipeds of
beautiful blue-coloured ice-blocks. The building was therefore
called by the Chukches _Tintinyaranga_ (the ice-house), a name which
was soon adopted by the _Vega_ men too. As mortar the builder,
Palander, used snow mixed with water, and the whole was covered with
a roof of boards. But as after a time it appeared that the storm
made its way through the joints and that these were gradually
growing larger in consequence of the evaporation of the ice so that
the drifting snow could find an entrance, the whole house had a sail
drawn over it. As supports of the three variation instruments large
blocks of wood were used, whose lower ends were sunk in pits, which,
with great trouble, were excavated in the frozen ground, and then,
when the block supports were placed, were filled with sand mixed
with water.

The ice-house was a spacious observatory, well-fitted for its
purpose in every respect. It had but one defect, the temperature was
always at an uncomfortably low point. As no iron could be used in
the building, and we had no copper-stove with us, we could not have
any fireplace there. We endeavoured, indeed, to use a copper
fireplace, that had been intended for sledge journeys, for heating,
but only with the result that the observatory was like to have gone
to pieces. We succeeded little better when we discovered farther on
in the winter, while trimming the hold, a forgotten cask of bear's
oil. We considered this _find_ a clear indication that instead of a
stove fired with wood we should, according to the custom of the
Polar races, use oil-lamps to mitigate the severe cold which
deprived our stay in Tintinyaranga of part of its pleasure. But this
mode of firing proved altogether impracticable. The fumes of the oil
smelled worse than those of the charcoal, and the result of this
experiment was none other than that the splendid crystals of ice,
with which the roof and walls of the ice-house were gradually
clothed, were covered with black soot. Firing with oil was
abandoned, and the oil presented to our friends at Yinretlen, who
just then were complaining loudly that they had no other fuel than
wood.

Besides the nine scientific men and officers of the _Vega_, the
engineer Nord