172 A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY 
black, could not be easily taken for an animal of 
the same sort. I mention these circumstances, 
however, as a mere matter of opinion, and I am 
free to confess to the charge that I have 
said more about the subject altogether than it 
deserved. 
Thursday, February 3d.— Nothing of any im- 
portance occurred for this fortnight past; the 
weather has been for nearly all the time more 
boisterous than we usually had it during the 
first part of the winter: the thermometer has there- 
fore never been very low ; for, from the 20th of last 
month, until two o’clock this afternoon, it had 
never been under 40°; this evening however 
it came on a calm, and before midnight it 
fell as low as 44°. For some days past we have 
had so much light about noon, that both officers 
and men generally went to the mast-head to look 
out for the sun ; for although we were perfectly 
aware of the time on which it should re-appear, 
according to its declination, yet as the Dutch 
navigator, Barentz, saw it at Nova Zembla several 
days before it ought to have been seen, in the lati- 
tude in which he wintered, we had reason to 
suppose that whatever effect refraction might have 
there, the same might be expected to take place 
here. Notwithstanding our vigilance, we always 
found, however, that although it must have been 
very nigh the horizon for some days past, it 
never appeared above it until to-day.* As the 
* It deserves to be mentioned, that although we have 
not seen the sun so long before the time calculated as 
Barentz did, yet that its re-appearance to-day is three days 
