QQO DISCOVERIES OK 174(). 



severity of the cold, frost, and snow, — '^ trouble- 

 some enough," says Mr. Ellis, " but not seeming 

 to merit the terrible reports given of these winters 

 by some authors;" alluding no doubt to the exag- 

 gerated statements of Captain James. 



By the 1st November they were all com- 

 fortably hutted ; but on the 2d, the frost was so 

 severe that they could not keep the ink from 

 freezing at the fire; — the unburied bottled beer 

 was frozen solid near the fire; and the cold in- 

 creased to such a degree, that it was thought pru- 

 dent to remove the whole of the seamen out of 

 the ships into the log huts. It seems, however, 

 that the severity of cold is seldom felt above four 

 or five days in a month, and generally about the 

 full and change of the moon ; at which times, the 

 wind is usually from the north-west, and very tem- 

 pestuous; but at other times, though there is a hard 

 frost, Mr. Ellis says it is pleasant enough ; the winds 

 being variable and moderate, and the weather fa- 

 vourable for shooting or catching animals in traps, 

 chiefly rabbits and partridges, which they procured 

 in vast quantities. By constant exercise, when the 

 weather would admit of it, and by keeping good 

 fires of wood, and when burnt by stopping up 

 the chimney, they appear to have suffered very 

 little from the effects of cold; and we hear of none 

 of those wailings with which James's doleful narra- 

 tive is filled, at a place too full five leagues far- 

 ther to the southward on the same coast. Mr. 



