252 THE VOYAGE OF THE JEAXXETTE. 



the refrozeii ice may be purer than the ice newlv made. 

 But that it contains less than ten grains of salt to the 

 gallon I am not so ready to admit. In face of Wey- 

 precht's assertion, I do not intend to urge that he was 

 guided by taste rather than chemical test. I will simply 

 remark that we have not been able to find ice, old or 

 new, surface or subaqueous, that would be water proper 

 for men to use continually. Dr. Morse, of the Nares 

 Expedition, says, in his testimony before the Court of 

 Inquiry, that he tested the water obtained from the 

 melting of ice on the top of a floeberg and found it 

 pure. The inference is that he tested it analytically. 

 But I have had an idea for some time that the outbreak 

 of scurvy on board the English ships may have been 

 due to the continuous use of water which, though pure 

 enough to the taste, was unfit for consumption. For 

 instance, I find that our washing water, which is ob- 

 tained by scraping such floes as have retained or ac- 

 cumulated a little snow, is not objectionable to the 

 taste, but yet it contains 28.63 grains of salt to the 

 gallon, and would be highly injurious if used steadily. 

 Since the occurrence of the leak, and the use of the 

 Baxter boiler to run a bilge-pump, our distilled water 

 has been made by the main boiler. As this was shallow 

 some salt was carried over from it to the distiller, and 

 the resulting water showed 13.49 grains of salt per gal- 

 lon. This, of course, was too much, but we have been 

 in an emergency where purer water was not possible. 

 Now that we have hauled the fires under the main 

 boiler, the distilling has to be done by the steam-cut- 

 ter's boiler when it is not pumping the bilge out. As 

 this boiler is fed from the bilge, the drinking water is 

 made from the water leaking into the ship. Until we 

 began to drink it we were under the impression that it, 



