166 ARCTIC VOYAGES. Chap. VI. 



Having provided for the employment and recrea- 

 tion of the men, Parry still seemed to think that it 

 might be imagined, as indeed had been antici- 

 pated, that want of novelty was a disadvantage 

 likely to render the confinement of the officers more 

 tedious than before at Melville Island ; but this, he 

 says, was not the case; the men had always 

 employment to prevent their being idle, though not 

 perhaps sufficient to prevent unpleasant thoughts 

 from occasionally obtruding themselves; but the 

 officers also had mostly resources within themselves. 

 With regard to them, he observes, that " what 

 with reading, writing, making and calculating 

 observations, observing the various natural pheno- 

 mena, and taking the exercise necessary to preserve 

 our health, nobody I believe ever felt any symptoms 

 of ennui during our continuance in winter quar- 

 ters." He adds, — 



" Among the recreations which afforded the highest gra- 

 tification to several among us, I may mention the musical 

 parties we were enabled to muster, and which assembled on 

 stated evenings throughout the winter, alternately in Com- 

 mander Lyon's cabin and in my own. More skilful ama- 

 teurs in music might well have smiled at these, our humble 

 concerts ; but it will not incline them to think less of the 

 science they admire, to be assured that, in these remote and 

 desolate regions of the globe, it has often furnished us with 

 the most pleasurable sensations which our situation was 

 capable of affording : for independently of the mere gratifi- 

 cation afforded to the ear by music, there is perhaps scarcely 

 a person in the world really fond of it, in whose mind its 

 sound is not more or less connected with ' his far-distant 

 home.' There are always some remembrances which render 



