Note 10 — Chapter V · A Hard Struggle

“I am in a continual state of wonderment at the ice we are now travelling over. It is flat and good, with only smallish pieces of broken-up ice lying about, and a large mound or small ridge here and there, but all of it is ice which can hardly be winter-old, or at any rate has been formed since last summer. It is quite a rarity to come across a small tract of older ice, or even a single old floe which has lain the summer through—so rare, in fact, that at our last camping-place it was impossible to find any ice which had been exposed to the summer sun, and consequently freed from salt. We were obliged to be content with snow for our drinking-water.10 Certain it is that where these great expanses of flat ice come from there was open water last summer or autumn, and that of no little extent, as we have passed over many miles of this compact ice the whole day yesterday and a good part of the previous day, besides which there were formerly a considerable number of such tracts in between older, summer-old ice. There is little probability that this should have been formed in the vicinity hereabouts. More probably it has come from farther east or southeast, and was formed in open water on the east side of Wilczek’s Land. I believe, consequently, that this must indicate that there can be not a little open water along the east or northeast coast of Wilczek’s Land in the summer or autumn months.11