RETURN OF THE SUN IN SPRING. 343 



ally being that which immediately precedes and 

 accompanies the dawn. Experienced travellers who 

 have seen much of camp life have but too good 

 cause to know this. So also, it would seem, does the 

 temperature progressively fall throughout the great 

 night of the arctic winter. Dr. Moss, of H.M.S. Alert, 

 for instance, says 



" As the absence of the sun lengthened, so the cold increased. 

 Arctic expeditions have almost invariably registered their 

 lowest temperatures in February and March, the months in 

 which the earth is coldest, even in England. It may be 

 said to be always freezing in the far north. The temperature 

 sank permanently below freezing point in the middle of August, 

 and continued below it for nine months. On the third of 

 March, three days after sunrise, the unparalleled temperature 

 of minus 737 below zero was indicated by our thermo- 

 meters, and for many hours the temperature remained more 

 than 100 degrees below freezing." * 



Captain Markham also comments upon this remark- 

 able circumstance and says, " strange to say, our 

 extreme cold came with the returning sun ;" and 

 alluding to this intense cold of 106 below freezing 

 point, he states that it " was the lowest temperature 

 recorded by the expedition, obtained from the mean 

 of several thermometers; and so far as we could 

 ascertain, the lowest really authentic corrected observa- 

 tion that has ever been registered. " f During the latter 

 part of February 1876 the temperature at the winter 

 quarters of the Alert had gradually been getting lower 

 and lower, until at length it fell to this unprecedented 

 point ; yet we are told it was as far back as January 



* The Shores of the Polar Sea, by Dr. Edward L. Moss, M.D., 

 illustrated folio, 1878, p. 46. 



f The Great Frozen Sea, by Capt. A. H. Markham, R.N., 1880, p. 223. 



