sense in making such a toil of pleasure. But when they had had a good sleep, the fatigue was forgotten, and there lay the shining trout on the kitchen table. The next Saturday at three o'clock they would be off again.

The hardship was even greater as the autumn advanced and the nights turned cold. The tramps, too, became longer, when the boys grew big enough to take part in the harehunting at Krokskogen. This involved going for long intervals quite without food, and there would often be scarcely an hour's rest to be had for the better part of two days and two nights. They used to get so hungry that when they happened to descend upon Sandvik railway-station they cleared the refreshment counter in a twinkling of everything eatable. The man who was to become the friend and historian of the Eskimos had early experience both of fasting and voracity. Their unsavoury domestic arrangements could not dismay one who himself, during his nocturnal meals in the forest, had many a time picked. up a stick from the ground and stirred his coffee with it, and who, in somewhat riper years, was able to devour with relish the raw and not over-tempting trout on the kitchen. bench.

The woods of Nordmarken offered plenty of long runs for a snow-shoer who preferred to go his own way. It was here that a feeling for nature was fostered in him—a sense of the beauty of winter and summer, and of shifting atmospheric moods which do not as a rule appeal to boys. Here his tissues were hardened to face the Polar winters, while he stood in the crackling frost waiting for the hare, and envying him his warm white fur. It was hereabouts (at Fyllingen) that he was once hare-hunting with his brother for thirteen days on end. At the last they had nothing to

live on but potato cakes, and were half starved, both they and their dog. Then came killing-day at the farm, and the brothers consumed black-puddings till they nearly burst. When the time came to go home, Fridtiof had to shoulder seven hares, slung by the legs. He slipped, fell forwards, and all the hares shot out like the rays of a halo round his head.

There was one thing that used to annoy his snow-shoeing cronies in those days, and that was his total carelessness as to creature comforts. If he happened to look from the tower on Tryvand's Height away over to Stubdal, twenty miles off, a whim would all of a sudden seize him, and nothing would serve but he must set off without taking a crumb of food with him. He on one occasion descended upon a farm in Stubdal so ravenously hungry that the people did not forget his visit for many a day.

Another time he and a party of his friends set off on a long snow-shoeing expedition, each with his provision wallet. on his back-each one, that is to say, except Fridtiof Nansen. But when they got to the first resting-place he unbuttoned his jacket and took out of his breast pocketconcealed deep within the lining-several pancakes, which were as hot after the snow-shoeing as if they had just come off the pan. He held them up smoking: Have a pancake, any of you fellows?' None of them were dainty, but the pancakes seemed even less so, and they declined with thanks. Well,' he said, the more fools you, for let me tell you there's jam in them!' It is in such traits that he shows his kinship with the denizens of the great forests. He has the recklessness of the hunter and the lumberman, their daring and headlong spirits. He is a typical eastcountry boy. But at the same time there is systematic

intention in the training to which he subjects himself; his alert ambition reinforces his delight in unvarnished nature, and his tendency to set at defiance the customs of civilisation. 'The least possible' is early his ideal, and he has not the slightest objection to shocking public opinion in acting up to his principles. It never occurs to him to doubt that it is he who is right and the world that is wrong. He appears to have been one of the first consistent disciples. of Jaeger in Christiania, and later on, in his letters from Bergen, he boasts that now the wool theory is admitted on all hands. He quotes in this connection one of his favourite sayings: There was a man in a madhouse in London, who used to say: "I said the world was crazy, but the world said that I was crazy, and so they put me here."

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One thing his friends had to guard against: they must never say to him that anything was impossible, for that was inevitably the signal for him to attempt it. His boyish impetuosity brought him on one occasion to death's doorto the very verge of one of those leaps which even the expertest athlete cannot clear.

It was in 1878. On a walking tour with his brother Alexander, he came to Gjendin in the Jotunheim, and must needs climb the Svartdal Peak. There was a way round the back of the mountain which was more or less practicable, but Fridtiof would have none of that; he must of course go straight up the precipitous black face of the hill. 'As we got up towards the peak,' his brother relates, there was a snow-field which we had to cross. Beyond the snowfield lay the precipice, straight down into the valley. I had already had several attacks of giddiness, so that Fridtiof had given me his alpenstock, and was without it when it

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came to crossing the glacier. Instead of going carefully step by step, as he would do now, he goes at it with a rush, slips, and begins to slide down. I can see him turn pale. A few seconds more, and he will lie crushed to death in the valley. He digs his heels and nails into the ice, and brings himself to a standstill in the nick of time. That moment I shall never forget. Nor shall I forget his coming down to the tourist châlet and disappearing into the trousers which the burly secretary of the Tourist Club, N. G. Dietrichson, had to lend him, an essential part of his own having yielded to the friction of the glacier.'

The same year in which Fridtiof Nansen was in the Jotunheim, he had his first experience of ptarmigan shooting in the mountains-Norefjeld and thereabouts—and it was then they went on a tramp so exhausting that one of his brothers fell asleep far up on the heights, and had to be hauled along with the greatest difficulty. It was probably these early hunting expeditions through the forest and over the mountain plateaux that gave him his taste for the accurate observation of animal life, and thus supplied the initial impulse towards the line of study which he finally chose. In the year 1880 he matriculated with sufficient credit to prove that his distractions during schooltime had not been so absorbing as to prevent him from settling down to work when the moment arrived. He got a first class in all natural science subjects, mathematics and history; and when, in December 1881, he went up for his second examination, he was classed as laudabilis præ ceteris. He appears about this time to have been in some uncertainty as to his choice of a He was entered as a cadet at the military academy, but the nomination was cancelled when he finally resolved to

career.

continue his scientific studies. He never contemplated going into the medical profession, but had at one time an idea of taking the first part of the medical examination. It ended, however, in his choosing a special branch, Zoology. As early as January 1882 he applies to Professor Collett for advice. The Professor happens to remember how he himself has been urged by Arctic seamen to go with them and prosecute his studies during a sealing expedition. This ought to be the very thing for Nansen. He is an expert sportsman and a good shot-why should he not go to the Arctic regions on board a sealing vessel, make his observations, keep a record, and train himself for descriptive zoological research? Nansen came to see him, and he made the suggestion, which took hold of the young man at once. A week later he again called on the Professor, having in the meantime spoken to Captain Krefting of the sealer Viking, and arranged matters with him. On January 23, Nansen's father telegraphed to an old friend in Arendal asking him to secure the shipowners' sanction. The friend (to whom we are indebted for this information) was able, when called upon, to declare that Fridtiof Nansen was a sturdy, strapping fellow, ready with his hands, and capable of great endurance, so that, to the best of the witness's belief, he would prove a useful and desirable member of the expedition. Permission was instantly wired back, and Nansen, having employed the brief interval at the University in studying the anatomy of the seal, sailed from the port of Arendal on board the Viking on Saturday, March 11.

So easy are the transitions, so clear is the continuity of events, in the life of this young man, which to the outside observer seems to consist of one or two isolated exploits.

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