il, 1829, and sailed to the southward, leaving Gothland
Island to the left and Oeland Island to the right. A few days later we
succeeded in doubling Sandhommar Point, and made our way through the
sound which separates Denmark from the Scandinavian coast. In due time
we put in at the town of Christiansand, where we rested two days, and
then started around the Scandinavian coast to the westward, bound for
the Lofoden Islands.

My father was in high spirit, because of the excellent and gratifying
returns he had received from our last catch by marketing at Stockholm,
instead of selling at one of the seafaring towns along the Scandinavian
coast. He was especially pleased with the sale of some ivory tusks that
he had found on the west coast of Franz Joseph Land during one of his
northern cruises the previous year, and he expressed the hope that this
time we might again be fortunate enough to load our little fishing-sloop
with ivory, instead of cod, herring, mackerel and salmon.

We put in at Hammerfest, latitude seventy-one degrees and forty minutes,
for a few days' rest. Here we remained one week, laying in an extra
supply of provisions and several casks of drinking-water, and then
sailed toward Spitzbergen.

For the first few days we had an open sea and a favoring wind, and then
we encountered much ice and many icebergs. A vessel larger than our
little fishing-sloop could not possibly have threaded its way among
the labyrinth of icebergs or squeezed through the barely open channels.
These monster bergs presented an endless succession of crystal
palaces, of massive cathedrals and fantastic mountain ranges, grim and
sentinel-like, immovable as some towering cliff of solid rock, standing;
silent as a sphinx, resisting the restless waves of a fretful sea.

After many narrow escapes, we arrived at Spitzbergen on the 23d of
June, and anchored at Wijade Bay for a short time, where we were quite
successful in our catches. We then lifted anchor and sailed through the
Hinlopen Strait, and coasted along the North-East-Land.(2)

(2 It will be remembered that Andree started on his fatal balloon voyage
from the northwest coast of Spitzbergen.)

A strong wind came up from the southwest, and my father said that we had
better take advantage of it and try to reach Franz Josef Land, where,
the year before he had, by accident, found the ivory tusks that had
brought him such a good price at Stockholm.

Never, before or since, have I seen