[51] Our food, which we always took as hot as possible, had made our tongues and gums as hard as leather, so that we could not discriminate what we ate. Our great desire was not for flesh, but for white bread, potatoes, and milk.
[52] On May 5 a bear got away from us through a bad shot, but a second was killed just as he had attacked Torossy. May 9, again, a bad shot scared away a bear; on the eleventh one was killed by Herr Orel. This bear had already received a ball in his shoulder, and a second in his head an inch and a half under the right eye.
[53] With three boats, two of which were whale-boats, each 26 feet long and 7 feet broad. His crew wore Eskimo clothing, and, strange to say, some of them had gutta-percha masks. Parry’s towards the North Pole in 1827, Kane’s in 1855, and our own, have much in common: but the greatest difficulties were on our side.
[54] “Aussingen” is a sailor’s word for a particular rhythm to which they pull in time.
[55] It was Parry’s experience also that nothing melts the ice like rain.
[56] The wind maintained its westerly character, and we drifted, as we had so often before, to the right of its direction.
[57] Baer brought home from Novaya Zemlya ninety species of Phanerogams. According to an observation of Mojssejew, June 18, 1839, the thermometer in the sun stood at 93° F., and 59° F. in the shade.
[58] On older charts it is still separated by a sound from the mainland. The layers of drift-wood, which we found everywhere at a considerable height above the level of the sea, show beyond a doubt that the coast of Novaya Zemlya has gradually risen; but as in those latitudes this wood rots only after centuries, we have no measure to estimate the rate of this movement.
[59] These have not as yet been published.
[60] Thermometers should always hang freely; when they are enclosed in cases they give false values, especially if the cases should be filled with snow. In our first winter we were obliged on account of the ice-pressures to suspend our thermometers on the ship in such cases, and there can be no doubt that their readings were too high. Sometimes, however, they were too low, when the thermometers came in contact with the snow on the ship. Scoresby, Parry, and we ourselves observed that the temperature of the snow-covering sometimes sunk in clear winter nights some degrees below the temperature of the air.