water from which the calcoon has been smoked; another is to subject them to be clawed by a cat: occas sionally they beat them soundly with the heels of their shoes, and shave their heads.

The object of the present expedition was to reach the North Pole by means of two sledge-boats, so constructed as either to travel over the ice, or sail or row through spaces of open water, as circumstances might require. Captain Parry's old ship, the Hecla, was appointed to carry him and his companions to Spitzbergen, and there to wait in some secure harbour for his return. The vessel left the Nore on the 4th of April, reached Hammerfest on the 18th, and on the 27th, having received on board a number of trained reindeer (which proved useless), made sail to the northward. On the 14th of May, the Hecla was abreast of Hakluyt's Headland, when she was obliged to run into the main-ice for security in a heavy gale of wind. She remained beset and drifting about with the ice, chiefly to the eastward, for four-and-twenty days, when, on the 8th of June, she was liberated by a southerly wind dispersing the ice.

On reaching the Seven Islands, they were found to be all shut in by land-ice; but the party deposited on one of them, Walden Island, a store of provisions for their return. Captain Parry then

stood on to the northward, among loose and broken ice, in search of the main body, as far as 81° 5′ 32′′; but not finding anything like a field of ice, she stood back to the southward, and on the 19th of June discovered a bay on the north coast of Spitzbergen, in which the Hecla was anchored in latitude 79° 55′ N., longitude 16° 54′ E.

On the 21st of June, Captain Parry set out on his arduous undertaking, with two boats named the Enterprize and Endeavour; Mr. Beverly, the surgeon, being attached to his own, and lieutenant Ross, accompanied by Mr. Bird in the other; lieutenant Foster being left in charge of the Hecla. At Little Table Island, the highest latitude of land known on the globe, they left a deposit of provisions for their return. The mode in which the party pursued their journey is described by captain Parry as follows:

"It was my intention to travel wholly at night, and to rest by day, there being, of course, con stant daylight in these regions during the summer season. The advantages of this plan, which was occasionally deranged by circumstances, consisted, first, in our avoiding the intense and oppres➡<

sive glare from the snow during the time of the sun's greatest altitude, so as to prevent, in some degree, the painful inflammation in the eyes, called 'snow blindness, which is common in all snowy countries. We also thus enjoyed greater warmth during the hours of rest, and had a better chance of drying our clothes; besides which, no small advantage was derived from the snow being harder at night for travelling. The only disadvantage of this plan was, that the fogs were somewhat more frequent and more thick by night than by day, though even in this respect there was less difference than might have been supposed, the temperature during the twenty-four hours undergoing but little variation. This travelling by night and sleeping by day so completely inverted the natural order of things, that it was difficult to persuade ourselves of the reality. Even the officers and myself, who were all furnished with pocket chronometers, could not always bear in mind at what part of the twentyfour hours we had arrived; and there were several of the men who declared, and I believe truly, that they never knew night from day during the whole excursion.

"When we rose in the evening, we commenced our day by prayers, after which we took off our fur sleeping-dresses, and put on those for travelling; the former being made of camblet, lined with racoon-skin, and the latter of strong blue box-cloth. We made a point of always putting on the same stockings and boots for travelling in, whether they had dried during the day or not, and I believe it was only in five or six instances

at the most, that they were not either still wet or hard-frozen.

This, indeed, was of no consequence, beyond the discomfort of first putting them on in this state, as they were sure to be thoroughly wet in a quarter of an hour after commencing our journey; while, on the other hand, it was of vital importance to keep dry things for sleeping in. Being "rigged" for travelling, we breakfasted upon warm cocoa and biscuit, and after stowing the things in the boats and on the sledges, so as to secure them as much as possible, from wet, we set off on our day's journey, and usually travelled from five to five and a half hours, then stopped an hour to dine, and again travelled four, five, or even six hours according to circumstances. After this we halted for the night, as we called it, though it was usually early in the morning, selecting the largest surface of ice we happened to be near, for hauling the boats on, in order to avoid the danger of its breaking up, by coming in contact with other masses, and also to prevent drift as much as possible. The boats were placed close along-side each other, with their sterns to the wind, the snow or wet cleared out of them, and the sails, supported by the bamboo masts and three paddles, placed over them as awnings, an entrance being left at the bow. Every man then immediately put on dry stockings and fur boots, after which we set about the necessary repairs of boats, sledges, or clothes; and, after serving the provisions for the succeeding day, we went to supper. Most of the officers and men then smoked their pipes, which served to dry the boats and awnings very much, and usually raised the temperature of our lodgings 10 or 15. This part of the twenty-four hours was

often a time, and the only one, of real enjoyment to us; the men told their stories, and fought all their battles o'er again,' and the labours of the day, unsuccessful as, they too often were, were forgot ten A regular watch was set during our resting-time, to look out for bears or for the ice breaking up around us, as well as to attend to the drying of the clothes, each man alternately taking this duty for one hour. We then concluded our day with prayers, and having put on our fur dresses, lay down to sleep with a degree of comfort, which perhaps few persons would imagine possible under such circumstances; our chief inconvenience being, that we were .... Biscuit

Pemmican

Sweetened Cocoa Powder
Rum
Tobacco

"Our fuel consisted entirely of spirits of wine, of which two pints formed our daily allowance, the cocoa being cooked in an iron boiler over a shallow iron lamp, with seven wicks; a simple apparatus, which answered our purpose remarkably well. We usually found one pint of the spirits of wine sufficient for preparing our breakfast, that is, for heating twenty-eight pints of water, though it always commenced from the temperature of 32°. If the weather was calm and fair, this quantity of fuel brought it to the boiling point in about an hour and a quarter; but more generally the wicks began to go out before it had reached 200° This, however, made a very comfortable meal to persons situated

as we were."

This adventurous party soon began to experience difficulties. The sea

somewhat pinched for room, and therefore obliged to stow rather closer than was quite agreeable. The temperature, while we slept was usually from 36° to 45°, according to the state of the external atmosphere; but on one or two occasions, in calm and warm weather, it rose as high as 60° to 66°, obliging us to throw off a part of our fur dress. After we had slept seven hours, the man appointed to boil the cocoa roused us, when it was ready, by the sound of a bugle, when we commenced our day in the manner before described.

"Our allowance of provisions for each man per day was as follows::

3 ounces per week. continued to be covered with loose, rugged masses of ice, separated only by narrow pools of water, which obliged them constantly to launch the boats down one piece and haul them up another, having first unloaded, not only to lighten them but to save the provisions from risk of loss. To these rugged masses next succeeded small floes of ice, on the upper surfaces of which were numberless irregular needlelike crystals, placed vertically, nearly close together, varying in length from five to ten inches, in breadth half an inch, but pointed at both ends, loose and moveable, fatiguing to walk over, and cutting the boots and feet. These floes were generally covered with high and irregular hummocks of ice, over which the boats were to be hauled, sometimes almost perpendicularly; not unfrequently the

surface was covered with deep snow, into which, being half melted, the men slipped up to their knees at every other step, so that they were sometimes five minutes together in moving a single empty boat with all their united strength. Sometimes they had to drag the boats and sledges through large pools of water; and in all cases they had to make three or four journeys over the same floe, to bring up the boats, the sledges, and the provisions. The conse quence of all this was, that they frequently advanced only two, sometimes three, and seldom more than four or five miles, directly north, in the course of a day. On one occasion, after six hours of incessant toil and great risk, both to the boats and men, they had only accomplished about a mile and a quarter. Add to all this, the snow at one time fell heavily; and at others, the rain came down in torrents, keeping their clothes in a constant state of wetness. Once it continued without intermission for twenty-one hours, and was succeeded by dense fogs. In one place it required two hours of hard labour to proceed one hundred and fifty yards. In another, after eleven hours of actual and severe labour, requiring the whole strength of the party to be exerted, the

space travelled over did not exceed four miles, of which scarcely two were made good to the northward. But this slowness of apparent progress was not the worst of their misfortunes; small as it was, it was not real. On the 20th of July, captain Parry says,

"We halted at seven A. M., ha ving, by our reckoning, accomplished six miles and a half in a N. N. W. direction, the distance traversed being ten miles and a

half. It may, therefore, be ima gined how great was our mortification in finding that our latitude, by observation at noon, was only 82° 36′ 52", being less than five miles to the northward of our place at noon on the 17th, since which time we had certainly travelled twelve in that direction."

This discouraging circumstance was carefully concealed from the men. On the 22nd they had the satisfaction of observing that the ice had certainly improved; though the floes had not extended their sur faces so as to entitle them to be called "fields," yet hopes were now entertained that their progress would be more commensurate with their exertions. In proportion, then, to the hopes they had begun to entertain, was their disappointment in finding, at noon, that they were in latitude 82° 43′ 5′′, or not quite four miles to the northward of the observations of the preceding day, instead of the ten or eleven which they had travelled! The weather was in general sufficiently warm, though frequently wet and foggy, and the ice again became broken into small rugged patches.

"The weather improving towards noon on the 26th, we ob tained the meridian altitude of the sun, by which we found ourselves in latitude 82° 40′ 23′′; so that, since our last observation (at midnight on the 22nd), we had lost by drift no less than thirteen miles and a half; for we were now more than three miles to the southward of that observation, though we had certainly travelled between ten and eleven due north in this interval! Again, we were but one mile to the north of our place at noon on the 21st, though we had estimated our distance made good at twenty-three miles.

Thus it appeared that, for the last five days, we had been struggling against a southerly drift exceeding four miles per day.

The very highest point of latitude that was reached captain Parry considers to be 82° 45', on the meridian of 19° 25′ east of Greenwich, he says,—

"At the extreme point of our journey, our distance from the Hecla was only one hundred and seventy-two_miles in a S. 8° W. direction. To accomplish this distance we had traversed, by our reckoning, two hundred and nine ty-two miles, of which about one hundred were performed by water, previously to our entering the ice. As we travelled by far the greater part of our distance on the ice three, and not unfrequently five times over, we may safely multiply the length of the road by two and a half; so that our whole distance, on a very moderate calculation, amounted to five hundred and eighty geographical, or six hundred and sixty-eight statute miles, being nearly sufficient to have reached the Pole in a direct line. Up to this period we had been particularly fortunate in the preservation of our health; neither sickness nor casualties having occurred among us, with the exception of the trifling accidents already mentioned, a few bowel complaints, which were soon removed by care, and some rather troublesome cases of chilblains arising from our constant exposure to wet and cold."

The party rested on the 26th, which happened to "be one of the warmest and most pleasant to the feelings," though the thermometer was only from 31° to 36 in the shade, and 37° in the sun, but it was calm and dry.

In the afternoon of the following day, the party turned their faces

to the southward, and captain Parry observes, "I can safely say, that dreary and cheerless as were the scenes we were about to leave, we never turned homewards with so little satisfaction as on this occasion." The difficulties for some time were not less than before, but they felt confident that, on returning to the southward, they should keep all they gained, and, probably, by the southern set, make a good deal more, which turned out to be the case.

The further they proceeded southerly, the ice became thinner, and more frangible, the snow softer, and the surface more frequently covered with pools of water: the men were afflicted with chilblains, and the epidermis, or scarf-skin, in many peeled off in large flakes, from every part of the body. A large she-bear was killed, and the men spent the whole day in frying and devouring bear steaks, the consequence of which was, that for several days many of them complained of violent pains: "they all," says captain Parry,

amusingly enough, attributed this effect to the quality and not the quantity of meat they had eaten." The officers, who ate less intemperately suffered nothing of the kind. At length on the 11th of August, in latitude 81°34′ they reached the open sea," which was dashing with heavy surges against the outer masses," and finally quitted the ice, after having sojourned upon it for fortyeight days.

The next day, steering through the fog by compass, they made the Little Table Island, right a-head. Here they soon discovered that the bears had devoured all the bread they had deposited. From hence they bore up for Walden Island, and reached it in the evening.