We were all prepared for a long and monotonous winter, and each one, according to his proclivities, had drawn out for himself a lengthy programme of improving study. One would read through Alison’s “History of Europe,” another would master Italian, a third preferred German; others chose music, and would learn the banjo, or, if the mess preferred it, the tambourine. But the historic programme only was carried out. Most of us found that our time was more than occupied with notes and observations of Arctic Nature that we might never have another opportunity of making. There was the electric, magnetic, microscopic, thermal, and chemical states of earth, air, ice, and water, and a hundred other pressing questions, that made us regret we had not spent our whole lives in preparation for our unlimited opportunities. Then there was other work that could not be postponed. It was above all things necessary to ascertain the exact position of our winter quarters, so that the geographical discoveries of the Expedition—the coast-lines passed by the ship as well as those traversed by sledges—might be fastened down to at least one fixed point. For this purpose, many careful observations of moon and stars were required, and the officer who had accepted the duties of astronomer had no easy time of it. He and his assistant spent many a chill hour watching the occultation or transit of some star or planet. The observatory is necessarily open to the air; snow-wreaths festoon its walls and corners. Every breath freezes on the metal and glasses of the telescope; even the vapour from the observer’s eye quickly clouds the lens. His assistant, utterly unrecognisable under a pile of furs and mufflers, stands shivering beside him, carefully keeping a chronometer from the cold, for neither watch nor chronometer will work in the temperature of Arctic night.

The weather during winter was, as a rule, so calm and clear that observations on the stars could be made almost at any time; but it was not a little remarkable that, even at the clearest times, some icy dust, too fine to be called snow, was always falling. On the 27th December, for example, it was so clear that a star of the third magnitude less than three degrees from the northern horizon could be satisfactorily observed. And yet, in twelve hours, a glass plate exposed on top of a neighbouring hill collected a quantity of little crystals equal to nine tons per square mile. These crystals, not to be confounded with icy dew formed on the plate itself, were altogether too small to be seen with the naked eye; but there was no difficulty in using a microscope, even in the lowest temperatures, except that the mercurial reflector was soon destroyed by the cold. It was when these crystals assumed their simpler shapes, and were abundant in the air, that the moon appeared decked in those halos and crosses known as paraselena, or mock moons. Twice in December we had good examples of them. Upon each occasion the moon appeared in the centre of a large and luminous cross, surrounded by two circles plainly distinguishable between us and the snow-clad land. The cross swayed and trembled with every breath of air, and vanished altogether when wind disturbed the tissue of falling crystals; but the halos were more permanent. ([Plate No. 7]) gives a better idea of them than any verbal description. It is a reproduction of a sketch made early in the morning of the 11th of December. Our long-lost wanderer, Sally, absent since 15th October, when she was left by a sledging party near Sickle Point, had just put in an appearance, and may be seen in the foreground intensely watching the proceedings of two officers engaged in measuring the holes with a sextant.

Plate VIII.—LUNAR HALOES.—p. [44].

THIS is a sketch, from the floes alongside the ship, of an unusually distinct Paraselena that appeared on 11th December, 1875. The haloes and cross round the moon are caused by the passage of her light through a tissue of impalpably minute needle-like crystals of ice slowly falling through the atmosphere. The snow-covered hills of Floeberg Beach are in the background, and in the foreground two officers are measuring the arc with a sextant, while the long-lost Sally looks on. In summer the sun was often surrounded by a similar meteor, but intensely dazzling, and tinted with colours like an outside rainbow.

A propos of Sally, her adventures might make a canine romance. She was a young, rather unsociable, grey-coloured Eskimo dog, that formed one of Lieutenant Aldrich’s team in his autumn sledge-journey into the “untrodden north” and past Cape Joseph Henry. Like several others, the cold and hard work were too much for her, and she broke down utterly. The more “fits” she had, and the feebler she got, the more she was set upon and bitten by the stronger ones. It was impossible to delay the sledge, and there was nothing to be done but either shoot the poor beast, like a canine comrade a few days before, or adopt a less merciful course and leave her on the floes, with a faint hope that she might revive and limp home after the sledge. It was late in September that Sall was thus cast adrift. On 22nd of October the men of Captain Markham’s party fell in with her, still lingering about the spot where she had been abandoned, very lean and hungry, but too wild or too feeble to follow them back to the ship. From that time she was written down in the roll call as “expended.”