hunting
expedition to the same regions.

[Illustration: SIVERT KRISTIAN TOBIESEN. Born at Tromsoe in 1821,
died on Novaya Zemlya in 1873. ]

As he could not enter the Kara Sea, he sailed up along the west
coast, where in the middle of September he was beset in the
neighbourhood of the Cross Islands. Hence seven of the crew
travelled south in a boat to seek for a vessel, but Tobiesen
himself, his son and two men, remained on board. Their stock of
provisions consisted of only a small barrel of bread, a sack of
corners and fragments of ship biscuit, a small quantity of coffee,
tea, sugar, syrup, groats, salt meat, salt fish, a few pounds of
pork, a couple of tin canisters of preserved vegetables, a little
bad butter, &c. There was abundance of wood on board and on the
land. Notwithstanding the defective equipment they went on bravely
and hopefully with the preparations for wintering, gathered
drift-wood in heaps on the beach, threw a tent of sails over the
vessel, threw up snow about its sides, covered the deck with, the
hides of the seals and walruses that had been captured during
summer, did what could be done to bring about good ventilation on
board, &c. A large number of bears came to the winter station at the
commencement of the wintering, affording an abundant supply of fresh
bears' flesh. So long as this lasted, the health of the party was
good, but when it came to an end at the new year, their food for
three weeks consisted mainly of ill-smelling salt bears' flesh.
Tobiesen and one of the men were now taken ill. The cold sank to
-39-1/2 deg. C.[183] On the 29th April, 1873, Tobiesen died of
scurvy. In the month of May his son was also attacked, and died on
the 5th July. The two men also suffered from scurvy, but recovered.
They rowed south in the month of August, and were rescued by a
Russian hunting-vessel.

[Illustration: TOBIESEN'S WINTER HOUSE ON BEAR ISLAND. (After a sketch
by the Author.) ]

The seven men, the harpooner Henrik Nilsen, Ole Andreas Olsen, Axel
Henriksen, Amandus Hansen, Nils Andreas Foxen, Johan Andersson and
Lars Larsen, who rowed away in autumn, had an exceedingly remarkable
fate. When they left the vessel they could only take with them
fourteen ship biscuits, six boxes of lucifers, two guns, with
ammunition, a spy-glass, a coffeepot and an iron pot, but no winter
clothes to protect them from the cold. At first, in order to get to
open water, they had to drag the boat about seven kilom