ME. CULLIiNrt's PUEDICTIONS. 183 



these winds would continue till the early part or the middle 

 of June, and would be followed by constant northwest winds 

 for the balance of June. This prediction was fully realized, 

 and in the month of June we actually drifted back over the 

 May track. During July and August there was scarcely 

 any wind, and the weather was misty and raw, it being the 

 most unpleasant time of the year, the coldest weather not 

 excepted. The damp and fog and cold struck chill to the 

 bones, and we could not afford to heat the ship as we did in 

 winter. The ice seemed to absorb all the heat from the sun 

 during the melting period of the year. 



The snow disappeared from the surface of the floe about 

 the middle of June, and the best traveling period over the 

 floe was considered to be between the middle of June and 

 the middle of July. But this was a subject for constant 

 discussion among the savans, among whom Mr. Dunbar was 

 the most experienced, he having been an old traveler in the 

 Baffin's Bay region. A considerable number of birds, prin- 

 cipally phalaropes and guillemots, were shot and very much 

 appreciated at dinner. 



The surface of the floe-pieces was now of a hard, green- 

 ish blue, and flinty, being covered in many places with thaw- 

 water. There were numerous cracks near the ship, but no 

 leads that went in any definite direction, and there was* no 

 chance to move, for the ship was imbedded in the ice so 

 firmly that a whole cargo of explosives would have been 

 useless. Lieutenant Chipp, an experienced torpedo operator, 

 made torpedoes and all the arrangements for taking advan- 

 tage of the first opportunity to free the ship. But the 

 opportunity never came. 



Mr. Chipp was an accomplished electrician, and during 

 the whole time in the ice he took up the subject recom- 

 mended by the Smithsonian Institution to the Polaris Expe- 

 dition namely, observations of the disturbances of the 

 galvanometer during auroras. He had wires laid out over 

 the ice, and earth-plates in the water, and the galvanometer 

 in the current, and obtained over two thousand observations 



