252 BARENTZ' THIRD VOYAGE. 



AD - and often afforded a most welcome mess of 



1596. 



fresh meat, which in taste resembled " conies' 

 flesh, and seemed as daintie as venison to us." 



As the winter advanced the cold became al- 

 most insupportable ; the beer and all the spirits 

 were frozen, " even our sacke, which is so hot, 

 was frozen very hard ;" the walls and roof of the 

 house were covered two inches thick with ice, 

 and the clothes on the backs of the people, even 

 near the fire, were covered with white frost. It 

 is needless to say, these poor creatures resorted 

 to every contrivance in their power to keep life 

 within their bodies, by making dresses and cloaks 

 of the fur of the animals they killed, and supply- 

 ing their fire with wood ; but the cold was occa- 

 sionally so intense that all the warmth they could 

 create was inadequate to render the apartment 

 supportable. They even heated stones, and billets 

 of wood, and put them upon their bodies ; but 

 this gave only a partial relief, for whilst they were 

 thus applied, even before a large fire, the opposite 

 side of their bodies was covered with hoar frost. 

 Yet, amidst all this misery and intense suffering, 

 the spirits of the party never drooped, nay, they 

 even derived consolation from the increase of the 

 bitterly cold temperature they were forced to 



endure, declaring that " the cold beginning to 

 igi 



strengthen was a sign the days were beginning 



