Our little harbour is a marvel of creation; a ring of mountains covered with snow, the summits of which were this morning veiled in mist. Immense glaciers, from which portions detach themselves with a fearful crash, animate this white landscape, while at the same time they inspire us with a feeling of vague dread. Gigantic icebergs, resembling in their shape and bluish colour immense crystals of copperas, are drifting about in the middle of the bay—a veritable oasis, where the temperature is very mild, notwithstanding the snow which covers the ground almost entirely.
The sun is very hot, casting a golden reflection over the whole of this charming picture, which the birds enhance by their glad song, as if to testify to their joy and love of life.
At 9 a.m. we set foot on terra firma with undisguised satisfaction. Andrée, Ekholm, and Strindberg go ashore equipped with their instruments. They fix our bearings and determine the magnetic declination.
In fact, they have been working incessantly since we went to sea. They are true men of science, in love with their work, learned, yet making no show of their knowledge. The geologists have found a vast field for their researches, and the botanists have been able to collect at their ease. However, while the fauna is varied enough, the flora is very scanty, being confined to a few lichens, with mosses of a pretty green colour, cochlearias, and dwarf saxifrages, the tiny violet flowers of which are charming to behold.
Some climbed the mountains and descended the slopes on ski, the beloved snow-shoes of the Scandinavian. Others went hunting with the arms presented by Swedish armourers to the Polar Expedition. As for myself, I was content to admire this imposing nature, and tried to utilise my modest talents as an amateur photographer, in order to perpetuate on negatives the splendid picture in which the Virgo was set, now appearing reduced to Liliputian proportions.
Our general quarters were established on the ruins of an encampment which had belonged to a party of Siberian hunters who spent the whole of last year on this spot.
There are many fragments of driftwood cast ashore by the waves, and numerous bones; a sailor picked up an enormous vertebra of a whale, and the doctor extracted a molar from the jaw of a bear (the bear was no longer there to protest).
The pilot went to explore the sea from the top of the mountains. No change this morning in the state of the ice.
We reassembled on the Virgo for lunch at two o’clock. Andrée went in the ship’s boat to shoot seals, but without hitting any. After lunch we returned to the shore, and each of us occupied himself according to his taste. The sky cleared up, and a very cold and cutting east wind arose. The boat was tossed about a good deal as we returned, and the current drove before it all the pieces of ice floating in the bay. At 11.30 p.m., at the moment when I am writing these lines, a sun-ray is falling through my porthole, and the wind is whistling with some violence.
Saturday, June 20th, 4 a.m.—Pleasant awakening at the mouth of the Bay of Ice-Fjord, opposite the Raftsund, which has been at anchor since last night.