Farthest North.

Manawatu Herald, 24 July 1897, Page 2

Farthest North.

X LAND AT LAST. On the 24th July land was seen and open water appearing, the kayaks were launched and lashed together, and the last two dog 9, as they could not be taken further, were shot. For two years they had not seen such a surface of water and they derived a read pleasure when the kayaks danced over the water. They caught up to the land and coasted along the shores and on August 10th camped on a little islet. It was then the ex« ploi'ers discovered that they had been skirting along islands. On the 15th they reached the islands they had been steering for for the last few days and having landed saw, with pleasore, in a sheltered corner among the stones, moss and flowers, beautifnl poppies and ft stellaria. Two days afterwards another island waa reached whioh seemed to them, to be one of the most lovely spots on the face of the earth. DrNansen writes " A beautiful flat beach, an old strand line with shells strewn about, a narrow belt of clear water along the shore, where snails and sea-urchins were visible at the bottom, and amphipoda were swimming about. In the cliffs overhead were hundreds of screaming little auks, and beside us the snow buntings fluttered from stone to stone with their cheerful twitter. At tbt bottom of the sea just beyond the beach I could see whole forests of seaweed. Under the cliffs here and there were drifts of beautiful rose* coloured snow. (This colour is owing to a beautiful minute red algae, whioh grows on the snow). Oq the north side of the island we found the breeding, plaoe of numbers of black backed gulls; they were sitting with their young in ledges of the oliffa." About the 24th August they had to make a halt, the way was blocked. So preparations were made for wintering. I ABTIO HOMES. There wa9 nothing for it but to ! get something built of stone. "We quarried stone in the dtbris at the | bottom of the cliff, and got together as much as we could. We kept at it until we had finished a small hut. It was nothing very wonderful, not long enough fur a man of my height to lie straight inside — I had to stick my feet out at the door — and just broad enough to admit of our lying side by side, and leave room for the cooking apparatus. It was worse, however, with regard to the -height. There was room to lie down, but to sit up decently straight was an impossibility for me. The roof was made of cur thin and fragile silk tent, spread over snowsboes and bamboo rods. We closed the doorway with our coats, and the walls were so loosely put together that we could see daylight between the stones on all sides. We afterwards called it the den, and a dreadful den it was too ; but we were none the less proud of our handiwork." A little later on, the 7th September, Dr Nanpen and Lieutenant Johansen set to work to build a better hut. " We quarried stones, dragged them together, dug out the site, and built walls as well as we could. We had no tools worth mentioning; those we used most were our two hands. The cut-off sledge- runner again did duty as a pick. We made a spade out of the shoulder-blade pf a walrus tied to a piece of broken snowihoestaff, and a mattock out of a walrus tusk tied to the cross-tree of a sledge. After a wet-k'a work, the walls of our hut were finished. They were not high, scarcely three' feet above the ground ; but we had dug down the 9. me distance into the ground, so we reckoned that it would be high enough to stand up in/ The hut was roofed with walrus hides. "By che aid of stones, moss, strips of hide, and snow to oover everything, we made the edges of the walls fcf some extent close-fitting. To make the hut habitable, We still had to construot benches of stone to lie upon inside it, and also a door. This consisted of an opening in one corner of the wall, which led to ft shore passage, dug out in the ground, and subsequently roofed over with ■ blocks of ice on very much the same principle as the passage to an E-kimo's house. We had not dug this passage so long as we wished, before the ground was frozen too hnrd for our implements. It was so low that we had to creep through it in a squatting posture to get into the hut. The inner opening was oivered with a bear-skin curtain, sewn firmly to the walrus-hide of the roof ; the outer end was covered with a loose bear skin laid over the opening. Our ever-recurring re-

mark while we were building was, how nioe and snug it would be when we got in. The hut was 10 feet long and 6 feet wide. Fancy having a place sheltered from the wind where you could stretch your limb 9 a little 1 We had not had that since last March on board the Fram." (To be continued.)