"N
OVEMBER 22. I walked yesterday, and to-day again, to the open water that separates us from Wellington Channel. It is a bold and rapid river, as broad as the Delaware at Trenton or the Schuylkill at Philadelphia, rolling wildly between dislocated hummock crags, and whirling along in its black current the abraded fragments of its shores. Ice of recent growth had cemented the gnarled masses about its margin into a ragged wall some twenty feet high, and perhaps thirty paces wide. I stood with perfect safety on a tall, spire-like pinnacle, and endeavored to trace its course. It could be seen reaching from a remote point in the southeastern part of the channel, and is probably connected with the open shore leads that stretch from Cape Riley past Cape Spencer toward the further coasts of North Devon. It passed about a mile and a half to the northwest of our vessels, and was lost in the distant ice-fields to the east.
“Returning with Captain De Haven, we saw the recent prints of a bear and two cubs, that had evidently been scenting our footmarks of the day before. The old bear was not large, measuring by her tail only six feet four inches; the young ones so small as to surprise us, their track not much bigger than that of a Newfoundland dog. At what breeding season were these cubs produced?
“I have been for some evenings giving lectures on topics of popular science, the atmosphere, the barometer, &c., to the crew. They are not a very intellectual audience, but they listen with apparent interest, and express themselves gratefully.
“November 25. Great clouds of dark vapor were seen to the southward to-day, the crape-wreaths of our first imprisonment. This frost-smoke is an unfailing indication of open water, and to us, poor prison-bound vagrants, is suggestive of things not pleasant to think about. It streamed away on the wind in black drifts.
“Our daylight to-day was a mere name, three and a half hours of meagre twilight. I was struck for the first time with the bleached faces of my mess-mates. The sun left us finally only sixteen days ago; but for some time before he had been very chary of his effective rays; and our abiding-place below has a smoky atmosphere of lamplit uncomfortableness. No wonder we grow pale with such a cosmetic. Seventy-seven days more without a sunrise! twenty-six before we reach the solstitial point of greatest darkness!
“The temperature continues singularly mild. Parry, at Melville Island, had -47° before this, twenty degrees lower than our minimum; and even in the more southern regions of Port Bowen and Prince Regent’s Straits, the cold was much greater. For some days now, zero has not been an uncommon temperature; and to-day we are in -14°, here far from unpleasantly cold. May not much of this moderated intensity of the weather be referred to the influence of the open water around us?
“We are still in our old neighborhood, at the brink of the channel, a mile or so from Cape Riley, and both shores in view.
“November 28. The sunlight, a mere band of red cloud; the day, a poor apology. Walked eastward toward Beechy Island, dimly seen. The ice river is clogged with ground masses of granular ice: toward the south it is more open.