348 ' ARCTIC VOYAGES. Chap. X. 



ter's journey of eight hundred and fifty-seven miles ; 

 in the progress of which there was a great inter- 

 mixture of agreeable and disagreeable circum- 

 stances." The latter, he thinks, if balanced, would 

 preponderate, and that walking in snow-shoes was 

 among the most prominent. To the inexperienced, 

 indeed, the suffering occasioned by walking in snow- 

 shoes appears to be dreadful, " and can be but 

 faintly imagined by a person who thinks upon the 

 inconvenience of marching: with a weight of be- 

 tween two and three pounds constantly attached to 

 galled feet and swelled ankles." But Mr. Hood 

 will best describe it. 



" The miseries endured during the first journey of this 

 nature are so great, that nothing could induce the sufferer 

 to undertake a second while under the influence of present 

 pain. He feels his frame crushed by unaccountable pres- 

 sure, he drags a galling and stubborn weight at his feet, 

 and his track is marked with blood. The dazzling scene 

 around him affords no rest to his eye, no object to divert his 

 attention from his own 'agonizing sensations. When he 

 rises from sleep, half his body seems dead, till quickened 

 into feeling by the h irritation of his sores. But, fortunately 

 for him, no evil makes an impression so evanescent as pain. 

 It cannot be wholly banished, nor recalled with the force of 

 reality, by any act of the mind, either to affect our deter- 

 minations, or to sympathise with another. The traveller 

 soon forgets his sufferings, and at every future journey their 

 recurrence is attended with diminished acuteness." — pp. 

 173, 174. 



Preparations were forthwith to be made at Chipe- 

 wyan for prosecuting the main object of the expe- 



