Excessive
Cold, As Indicated By The Thermometer, Took Place In January:
It then sunk
from 30 deg.
To 40 deg. below Zero: on the 11th of this month it was at 49 deg.; yet no
disease, or even pain or inconvenience was felt in consequence of this most
excessive cold, provided the proper precautions were used; nor did any
complaint arise from the extreme and rapid change of temperature to which
they were exposed, when, as was often the case, they passed from the
cabins, which were kept heated up to 60 deg. or 70 deg., to the open air, though
the change in one minute was in several instances 120 deg. of temperature.
Cold, however, as January was, yet the following month, though, as we have
already observed, it again exhibited the sun to them, was much colder; on
the 15th of February the thermometer fell to 55 deg. below Zero, and remained
for fifteen hours not higher than 54 deg.. Within the next fifteen hours it
gradually rose to 34 deg.. But though the sun re-appeared early in February,
they had still a long imprisonment to endure; and Captain Parry did not
consider it safe to leave their winter quarters till the 1st of August,
when they again sailed to the westward: their mode of proceeding was the
same as that which they had adopted the preceding year, viz. crawling along
the shore, within the fast ice; in this manner they got to the west end of
Melville Island.
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