252 SMITH SOUND 



Royal Arctic Theatre which opened on the 18th of 

 November, with which the winter was pleasantly whiled 

 away. " Can you sing or dance ? or what can you do 

 for the amusement of others ? " every man had been 

 asked before he was chosen, and the result was a 

 singularly happy time kept up until sunrise. 



The cold was intense and long-continued. Even the 

 tobacco pipes froze, the stem becoming solidly clogged 

 with ice as the smoking went on unless it was made so 

 short as to bring the bowl unpleasantly close to the 

 mouth. On the 1st of April the temperature was 

 down to minus 64, and three days afterwards it was 

 a hundred and five below freezing, the cold weather 

 preventing the departure of the dog-sledge for Dis- 

 covery Bay. 



During the autumn, sledging parties had laid out 

 reserves of stores for the spring journeys, and a certain 

 amount of practice had been given to the men in what 

 was intended to be the chief work of the expedition. 

 The field, however, was not promising. On one occa- 

 sion Nares went out to look at it. He obtained a fine 

 view of the pack for a distance of six miles from the 

 land. The southern side of each purely white snow- 

 covered hummock was brilliantly lighted by the orange- 

 tinted twilight. The stranded floebergs lining the 

 shore extended from half to three-quarters of a mile off 

 the land. Outside were old floes with undulating 

 upper surfaces separated from each other by Sherard 

 Osborn's "hedgerows of Arctic landscape," otherwise 

 ridges of pressed-up ice of every size. " It will be as 

 difficult," was his verdict, " to drag a sledge over such 

 ice as to transport a carriage directly across country in 



