is is slow work; but anyhow we are having clear,
bright weather. Yes, it is all very well--we snow-shoe, sledge,
read both for instruction and amusement, write, take observations,
play cards, chat, smoke, play chess, eat and drink; but all the same
it is an execrable life in the long-run, this--at least, so it seems
to me at times. When I look at the picture of our beautiful home in
the evening light, with my wife standing in the garden, I feel as
if it were impossible that this could go on much longer. But only
the merciless fates know when we shall stand there together again,
feeling all life's sweetness as we look out over the smiling fjord,
and ... Taking everything into calculation, if I am to be perfectly
honest, I think this is a wretched state of matters. We are now in
about 80 deg. north latitude, in September we were in 79 deg.; that is,
let us say, one degree for five months. If we go on at this rate
we shall be at the Pole in forty-five, or say fifty, months, and
in ninety or one hundred months at 80 deg. north latitude on the other
side of it, with probably some prospect of getting out of the ice
and home in a month or two more. At best, if things go on as they
are doing now, we shall be home in eight years. I remember Brogger
writing before I left, when I was planting small bushes and trees in
the garden for future generations, that no one knew what length of
shadows these trees would cast by the time I came back. Well, they
are lying under the winter snow now, but in spring they will shoot
and grow again--how often? Oh! at times this inactivity crushes one's
very soul; one's life seems as dark as the winter night outside;
there is sunlight upon no part of it except the past and the far,
far distant future. I feel as if I must break through this deadness,
this inertia, and find some outlet for my energies. Can't something
happen? Could not a hurricane come and tear up this ice, and set it
rolling in high waves like the open sea? Welcome danger, if it only
brings us the chance of fighting for our lives--only lets us move
onward! The miserable thing is to be inactive onlookers, not to be
able to lift a hand to help ourselves forward. It wants ten times
more strength of mind to sit still and trust in your theories and let
nature work them out without your being able so much as to lay one
stick across another to help, than it does to trust in working them
out by your own energy--that is nothing when you have a