Mean temperature for week ending April 11th, +8° 59'; gain, 12° 90'.
Mean temperature for week ending April 18th, +9° 55'; gain, 0° 55'.
Mean temperature for five days ending April 23d, +14° 56'; gain, 5° 01'.
“Changes show themselves in the configuration of the snow surfaces. The hummocks seem already to have diminished by evaporation. They are less angular, and blend in rounder hues with the snow drifts. Night has gone. I see still at midnight the circumpolar stars, and Jupiter, in his splendor, on the eastern sky; but I can read at midnight.
“April 25, Friday. Walked to open water to the northeast. The snow is melted through the crust. I sink up to my knees. Saw the tracks of a fox, very recent. The little fellow had come from the direction of the poor wounded bear, now cut off from us by the broken ice, swimming the lead at its narrowest crossing, some fifteen paces. So long as his patron could have supplied him with food, the little parasite would not have left him. It may be that the bear has perished from inability to hunt for both.
“Saw a right whale! Saw also a large flock of geese at 9 A.M., winging their way to the northward, and flying very low. They were so irregular in their order of flight, that I would have taken them for ducks—the Somateria; but my mess-mates say geese.
“April 26, Saturday. One of the changes which we must expect has brought back to us comparative winter. Yesterday gave us a noonday and morning temperature of +28°. It is now (10 P.M.) -9°. It was -7° at noonday, with a bright, clear sunshine. The change is due to a northerly wind. It has blown steadily throughout the day from northwest by north. We hope much from it in the way of drift. Our latitude was 69° 40′ 42″ N.; our longitude, 63° 08′ 46″ W.
“The wind change has given us no new ruptures. Indeed, it seems to have shut up the environing ‘leads’ around us. This may be a good preface to a squeeze; for I can see no water from the mast-head.
“The stars at midnight remind me of our Lancaster Sound noondays. The peculiar zone of fairly blended light, stretching over an amplitude of some seventy degrees—the colors red, Indian red, Italian pink, with the yellows; and then a light cobalt, gradually deepening into intense indigo as it reaches the northern horizon.
“April 27, Sunday. The cold increases, and our northwest wind continues. The day’s observation gives us 69° 35′ 50", so that we still go south encouragingly, though slowly. This big floe is so solid, that some of us are beginning to fear it may resist the pressure, and not break up in the bay; leaving us to the thaws of summer and the stormy winds of September before our imprisonment ceases. The apprehension has no mirth in it.