468 THE VOYAGE OF THE JEANNETTE. 



October 1th, Thursday. — We continued to-day the 

 banking up of snow against the ship's side. Daily visits 

 to the bear-trap have thus far been unproductive of 

 results, not even a track being found. Morning and 

 afternoon our hunting parties go out and entirely cir- 

 cumnavigate the ship at distances varying between two 

 and four miles, and do not see so much as a feather. 

 No water, no seals ; no seals, no bears ; and evidently 

 no bears, no foxes ; no foxes, no birds. We are all 

 alone in the midst of a (to us) measureless frozen ocean, 

 the only living things in the deathly waste of the north. 

 The days are so much alike that we almost lose track 

 of them, or rather fail to notice the date. Man is but 

 a superior kind of machine after all. Set him going, 

 and keep him wound up by feeding him, and he can 

 run monotonously like a clock, at least we do, and I do 

 not think we are exceptional creatures. 



Dull, leaden sky, gloomy as a dungeon to look at, and 

 an almost steady fall of light snow. 



October 9th, Saturday. — The ice is yet ready day 

 after day for contemplation, and is as unchanging as 

 the laws of the Medes and Persians. Not a sign of a 

 bear-track, and the bear-trap was never so carefully set, 

 nor the scraps of seal laid around it more innocently. 

 But even bears seem to have left this locality to itself. 



At eleven p. m. a slight disturbance occurred among 

 the dogs, and it led the quartermaster to believe there 

 was a bear within hail. In fact he thought he saw 

 Bruin ahead of the ship, and he called me promptly 

 from my reading. I rushed out, and though the dogs 

 took my appearance with my rifle as a sure sign of a 

 hunt, they could find nothing, nor could I discover 

 any traces. 



A dull, gloomy day, enough to make a man blue to 



