The thermometer runs down to more than sixty
degrees below freezing, a temperature tolerable in calm weather, but
distressing in a wind. The eye-piece of the telescope must be
protected now with leather, for the skin is destroyed that comes in
contact with cold metal. The voice at a mile's distance can be
heard distinctly. Happy the day when first the sun is seen to graze
the edge of the horizon; but summer must come, and the heat of a
constant day must accumulate, and summer wane, before the ice is
melted. Then the ice cracks, like cannons over-charged, and moves
with a loud grinding noise. But not yet is escape to be made with
safety. After a detention of ten months, Parry got free; but, in
escaping, narrowly missed the destruction of both ships, by their
being "nipped" between the mighty mass and the unyielding shore.
What animals are found on Melville Island we may judge from the
results of sport during ten months' detention. The island exceeds
five thousand miles square, and yielded to the gun, three musk oxen,
twenty-four deer, sixty-eight hares, fifty-three geese, fifty-nine
ducks, and one hundred and forty-four ptarmigans, weighing together
three thousand seven hundred and sixty-six pounds - not quite two
ounces of meat per day to every man. Lichens, stunted grass,
saxifrage, and a feeble willow, are the plants of Melville Island,
but in sheltered nooks there are found sorrel, poppy, and a yellow
buttercup. Halos and double suns are very common consequences of
refraction in this quarter of the world. Franklin returned from his
first and most famous voyage with his men all safe and sound, except
the loss of a few fingers, frost-bitten. We sail back only as far
as Regent's Inlet, being bound for Behring Strait.
The reputation of Sir John Ross being clouded by discontent
expressed against his first expedition, Felix Booth, a rich
distiller, provided seventeen thousand pounds to enable his friend
to redeem his credit. Sir John accordingly, in 1829, went out in
the Victory, provided with steam-machinery that did not answer well.
He was accompanied by Sir James Ross, his nephew. He it was who, on
this occasion, first surveyed Regent's Inlet, down which we are now
sailing with our Phantom Ship. The coast on our right hand,
westward, which Parry saw, is called North Somerset, but farther
south, where the inlet widens, the land is named Boothia Felix.
Five years before this, Parry, in his third voyage, had attempted to
pass down Regent's Inlet, where among ice and storm, one of his
ships, the Hecla, had been driven violently ashore, and of necessity
abandoned. The stores had been removed, and Sir John was able now
to replenish his own vessel from them. Rounding a point at the
bottom of Prince Regent's Inlet, we find Felix Harbour, where Sir
John Ross wintered.
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