A FROZEN SUMMER. 405 



mark that distinguishes Sunday from other days in this 

 part of the world as well as in other parts. 



Jid2/ Idth, Monday. — I cannot help thinking, as I 

 turn over a new leaf and commence a fresh page, that 

 I am wasting stationery in keeping a daily record of so 

 unimportant matter as our daily life. Each night I am 

 forced to admit that another day of our short season 

 is slipping away without any result worthy of the spirit 

 which conceived, and the enterprise which carried into 

 effect, this present Arctic expedition. And the realiza- 

 tion of our utter impotence to change our fate in any 

 way makes such an admission doubly disagreeable. A 

 bear in a trap, a bird in a cage, a ship in the ice, are 

 alike held in bondage sharp and galling. 



Of late, when one is tempted to feel blue, the sun, 

 which, under ordinary circumstances, induces cheerful- 

 ness, rather adds to our disgust. For as that luminary 

 provides means of determining our position, we are in- 

 formed on each occasion how far we have gone back- 

 wards ; or, in other words, how much nearer w^e are to 

 the South Pole and how much farther from the North 

 Pole. To-day, for example, we get observations for the 

 first time since the 16th, and find we have been drift- 

 ing, in these three days past, thirteen and four tenths 

 miles to S. 8° W. And this, despite the fact that we 

 have been having W. and N. W. winds. Job is re- 

 corded to have had many trials and tribulations which 

 he bore with wonderful patience ; but so far as is 

 known he was never caught in pack ice and drifted S. 

 and W. with W. winds. 



Hoping to see something consoling, I took a team of 

 dogs out to-da}^ to the S. E., to the open lane of water; 

 and after having been run away with twice and brought 

 back to the ship by the dogs, I was forced to secure 



