“Spent the afternoon in unsuccessful seal stalking, and in rigging and contriving a spring-gun for the Arctic foxes: a blood-thirsty day. But we ate of fox to-day for dinner; and behold, and it was good.
“October 5, Saturday. The wind evidently freshens up. The day has been bitterly cold. Although our lowest temperature was zero and—1°, we felt it far more than the low temperature of yesterday. Our maximum was as high as 4°; yet, with this, it required active motion on deck to keep one’s self warm.
“At 12h. 55m., we had an interval of clear sunshine. The utmost, however, to which it would raise one of the long register Smithsonian thermometers was 7°. The air was filled with bright particles of frozen moisture, which glittered in the sunshine—a shimmering of transparent dust.[C]
[C] Under the microscope these again showed obscure modifications of the hexagon.
“At the same time, we had a second exhibition of parhelia, not so vivid in prismatic tints as that of the 30th of September, but more complete. The sun was expanded in a bright glare of intensely white light, and was surrounded by two distinct concentric circles, delicately tinted on their inner margins with the red of the spectrum. The radius of the inner, as measured by the sextant, was 22° 04'; that of the outer, 40° 15'. The lowest portions of both were beneath the horizon, and of course not seen.
“From the central disk proceeded four radii, coincident with the vertical and the horizontal diameters of the circles.
“Their visible points of intersection were marked by bright parhelia; each parhelion having its circumference well defined, but compressed so as to have no resemblance to the solar disk.
“Six of these were visible at the same moment; those of the outer circle being fainter than the inner. Touching the upper circumference of this outer circle was the arc of a third, which extended toward the zenith. Indeed, at one time I thought I saw a luminosity overhead, which may have corresponded to its centre. The tints of this supplemental circle were very bright. The glowing atmosphere about the sun was very striking.
“The strange openings in the water of a few hours ago are now great rivers, lined by banks of hummocks, and wreathed in frost smoke. The continually increasing wind from the northward explains this southern drift of the ice, and with it these unwelcome openings. We are stationary, and the detached ice is leaving us.
“The strong floe of ice-table under ice-table, and hummock upon hummock, makes our position one of nearly complete solidity. We are glued up in ice; and to liberate us, some fearful disruption must take place. Twenty-five feet of solid ice is no feeble matrix, for a brig drawing but ten. Yet the water is wider, and still widening around us; so that now we hold on—that is, our floe holds on, to the great mass to the north of us, like a little peninsular cape.