have been able to get. He shrank from no amount of work, but went
on till he had found what I wanted. This time he procured nearly
two hundred and fifty good reindeer-skins, dressed by the Lapps,
and sent them to Christiania. Here I had great trouble in finding
a man who could sew skins, but at last I found one. We then went
to work to make clothes after the pattern of the Netchelli Eskimo,
and the sewing went on early and late -- thick anoraks and thin ones,
heavy breeches and light, winter stockings and summer stockings. We
also had a dozen thin sleeping-bags, which I thought of using inside
the big thick ones if the cold should be too severe. Everything was
finished, but not until the last moment. The outer sleeping-bags were
made by Mr. Brandt, furrier, of Bergen, and they were so excellent,
both in material and making-up, that no one in the world could
have done better; it was a model piece of work. To save this outer
sleeping-bag, we had it provided with a cover of the lightest canvas,
which was a good deal longer than the bag itself. It was easy to tie
the end of the cover together like the mouth of the sack, and this kept
the snow out of the bag during the day's march. In this way we always
kept ourselves free from the annoyance of drifting snow. We attached
great importance to having the bags made of the very best sort of skin,
and took care that the thin skin of the belly was removed. I have seen
sleeping-bags of the finest reindeer-skin spoilt in a comparatively
short time if they contained a few patches of this thin skin, as
of course the cold penetrates more easily through the thin skin,
and gives rise to dampness in the form of rime on meeting the warmth
of the body. These thin patches remain damp whenever one is in the
bag, and in a short time they lose their hair. The damp spreads,
like decay in wood, and continually attacks the surrounding skin,
with the result that one fine day you find yourself with a hairless
sleeping-bag. One cannot be too careful in the choice of skins. For