the follies which the strange
foreigners, richly provided with many earthly gifts but by no means
with practical sense, perpetrated. In any case it was with a certain
amazement and awe that they, when they exceptionally obtained
permission, entered one by one through the doors in order to see the
lamps burn and to peep into the tubes. Many times even a dog-team
that had come a long way stopped for a few moments at the ice-house
to satisfy the owner's curiosity, and on two occasions in very bad
drifting weather we were compelled to give shelter to a wanderer who
had gone astray.

When this ice-house was ready and hourly observations began in it,
life on board took the stamp which it afterwards retained in the
course of the winter. In order to give the reader an idea of our
every-day life, I shall reproduce here the spirited sketch of a day
on the _Vega_, which Dr. Kjellman gave in one of his home letters:--

"It is about half-past eight in the morning. He whose
watch has expired has returned after five hours' stay in
the ice-house, where the temperature during the night has
been about -16 deg.. His account of the weather is good
enough. There are only thirty-two degrees of cold, it is
half-clear, and, to be out of the ordinary, there is no
wind. Breakfast is over. Cigars, cigarettes, and pipes are
lighted, and the gunroom _personnel_ go up on deck for a
little exercise and fresh air, for below it is confined
and close. The eye rests on the desolate, still
faintly-lighted landscape, which is exactly the same as it
was yesterday; a white plain in all directions, across
which a low, likewise white, chain of hillocks or
_torosses_ here and there raises itself, and over which
some ravens, with feeble wing-strokes, fly forward,
searching for something to support life with. 'Metschinko
Orpist,' 'metschinko Okerpist,' 'metschinko Kellman,' &c.,
now sounds everywhere on the vessel and from the ice in
its neighbourhood. 'Orpist' represents Nordquist,
'Okerpist' again Stuxberg. It is the Chukches' morning
salutation to us. To-day the comparatively fine weather
has drawn out a larger crowd than usual, thirty to forty
human beings, from tender sucking babes to grey old folks,
men as well as women; the latter in the word of salutation
replacing the _tsch_-sound with an exceedingly soft
caressing _ts_-sound. That most of them h