The air has been, however, for the most part, quite clear. But little snow has fallen since November. The total depth now mounts up to 53¾ inches. I am more and more struck with the difference in the atmospheric conditions of this place and Van Rensselaer Harbor. There we had rarely moisture, and gales were scarcely known. The temperatures were very low, and the winter was marked by a general calm. Here the temperatures are more mild than Parry's at Melville Island, the atmospheric disturbances have been very great, and the amount of snow has been truly surprising. There is one comfort at least in the winds. They either carry off the snow or pack it very hard, so that we get about with as little difficulty as if we were walking upon the bare ice. It is pounded as hard as the drives in the Central Park.
All these unusual phenomena are, as has been hitherto observed, doubtless due to the close proximity of the open sea. How extensive this water may be is of course unknown, but its limits cannot be very small to produce such serious atmospheric disturbance. It seems, indeed, as if we were in the very vortex of the north winds. The poet has told us that the north winds
"Are cradled far down in the depths that yawn
Beneath the Polar Star;"
and it appears very much as if we had got into those yawning depths, and had come not only to the place where the winds are cradled, but where they are born.
EVAPORATION AT LOW TEMPERATURES.
I have been making, all the winter through, a series of experiments which give me some interesting results. They show that evaporation takes place at the very lowest temperatures, and that precipitation often occurs when the air is apparently quite clear. To determine this latter, I have exposed a number of smooth and carefully measured ice-surfaces, and have collected from them the light deposit. These accumulations, after reducing them to the standard of freshly fallen snow, amount thus far to seven eighths of an inch. To determine the evaporation, I have suspended in the open air a number of thin ice-plates, made in a shallow dish, and some strips of wet flannel. The flannel becomes perfectly dry in a few days, and the ice-plates disappear slowly and steadily. I generally weigh them every second day, and it is curious to watch my little circular disks silently melting away and vanishing "into thin air," while the thermometer is down in the zeros.
This evaporation at low temperatures is constantly taking place before our eyes, to our advantage. On wash-days the clothes are hung on lines stretched across the ship's rigging, or upon poles across the ice, as you will see on Monday afternoons in the farmhouse yards; and before the week is over the moisture has disappeared, no matter how cold it may be.
January 16th.
Our eyes now turn wistfully to the south, eagerly watching for the tip of Aurora's chariot, as the fair goddess of the morning rises from the sea to drop a ray of gladness from her rosy fingers into this long-neglected world.