WINTER JOURNEYS. 377 



made daily pilgrimages to a hill in the neighborhood, 

 where he occasionally succeeded in obtaining a meridian 

 observation of the sun, and always succeeded in getting 

 his fingers frozen in the operation. 



Kennedy, being almost the only man on board who 

 had ever se^n a snow-shoe or a dog-sledge before, was 

 constantly engaged in constructing these indispensable 

 implements for winter travelling, and in teaching his 

 crew the use of them. Thus occupied, the time passed 

 cheerfully by. The nights were long and dark, and grew 

 rapidly longer and darker. The cold winds howled over 

 them from off the chilly regions around the pole, bear- 

 ing in their course blinding clouds of snow, circling and 

 screaming madly round the solitary ship, and whistling 

 among the rigging as if impatient for its destruction, 

 and then roaring away over the frozen sea, to spend 

 their fury at last on the black waves of Hudson's Bay 

 Sometimes the sun shone brightly out in a clear, cloud- 

 less sky, glittering on the icy particles which floated in 

 the still, cold atmosphere, and blazing on the tops of the 

 neighboring hills, whose white outlines were clearly and 

 sharply defined against the blue heavens ; and, as if Na- 

 ture desired to make some compensation for the length- 

 ened period of darkness to which she doomed the land, 

 one, and sometimes two mock-suns, or, as the sailors 

 sometimes call them, "sun-dogs," shone in the firma- 

 ment, vieing in splendor with the glorious orb of day 

 himself. 



About the 5th of January, 1852, all was ready for the 

 commencement of the long-talked-of winter journeys, 

 and the morning of that day was ushered in with the 

 clattering of snow-shoes and sledges, the cracking of 

 whips, the shouts of men, and the howling and yelping 

 of dogs. Although all the men of the Prince Albert 

 were out upon the ice, only five of them were appointed 



