TO THE ‘ARCTIC REGIONS. 47 
_ The weather has been colder to-day than we have 
yet felt, being half a degree less, indeed, than we 
had it during the whole of last voyage, our lowest 
temperature, last year, being 263°, and to-day it was 
as low as 26°. We sufter, however, no inconvenience 
from the cold, but the moisture that freezes on the 
rigging renders it disagreeable to handle. 
Thursday, 15th.— Nothing has occurred for 
these three days past deserving of remark; the wea- 
ther has been, I may almost say, invariably foggy, 
which, together with the quantity of ice that we 
have been constantly hampered with, has rendered 
our progress to the northward very slow. Our 
latitude to-day, at noon, was only 70° 27’ N., which 
is only a little more than one degree farther than we 
were four days ago. We have reason to suppose, 
however, that the three or four last degrees of lati- 
tude that we have come through, are the most diffi- 
cult to navigate of any part of these seas, for they 
are the narrowest part of the Straits, and at this 
season of the year will, I have no doubt, be always 
found choked with the ice that drifts down from 
Baffin’s Bay. ‘Two boats were sent this forenoon to 
an iceberg, to bring some of it on board for dissolv- 
ing into water. As this ice appeared to be more 
compact than what [ have usually observed the berg- 
ice to be, I formed a piece of it into a cube *, for the 
purpose of determining its specific gravity, which 
was found however not to differ materially from what 
_ we have been accustomed to find it by similar experi- 
* The sides of this cube measured six inches and ;*,, and when 
put into a tub of sea-water at the temperature of 33° and of the 
specific gravity 1.0256, nine-tenths of an inch remained above 
the surface of the water. 
