I 



292 DISCOVERIES OF J 746. 



«' or anv other smooth sohd surface in the winter, 

 our fingers are froze fast to it; if, in drinking a 

 dram of brandy out of a glass, one's tongue or 

 lips touch it, in pulling it away, the skin is left 

 upon it. An odd instance of this sort happened 

 to one of our people, who was carrying a bottle of 

 spirits, from the house to his tent ; for not having 

 a cork to stop the bottle, he made use of his 

 finger, which was soon froze fast, by which acci- 

 dent he lost a part of it to make a cure practicable. 

 All solid bodies, as glass, iron, ice and such like, 

 acquire a degree of cold so very intense, that they 

 resist the efl^ects even of a strong heat, and that 

 too for a good while :"*— yet with all this the in- 

 habitants, according to Mr. Ellis, are neither un- 

 comfortable nor unhappy — nay, he asserts, that 

 Europeans even, who have lived here for some 

 years, prefer it to all other places ; and that when 

 they leave it and come home with their ships, they 

 usually grow tired, in a few months, of a more 

 moderate climate, and wish with impatience for the 

 proper season, that may give them an opportunity 

 of re-visiting these frozen regions. 



It was the 2d June before the winter finally 

 took leave of them, and enabled them to get the 

 vessels ready for dropping down to the mouth of 

 the river ; and it was not till the 24th that they 

 succeeded in passing the shoals; they then stood to 



* A Voyage to Hudson's Bay, by Henry Ellis, p. 181. 



