140 Hospitality on Board. [jauuary, ises. 



a"-ainst scurvy, cases of which were very few and of the lightest fonn. 

 His first disappointment was the news that botli the Antelope and 

 the Black Eagle had been in Repulse Bay in August previous ; that 

 the land was then covered with reindeer, and that these ships had 

 looked for him, and would probably have remained there all the win- 

 ter had they found him. These vessels had seen many whales, and 

 each ship had secured ten; all which had been seen, were small. Hall's 

 disappointment was followed by his entire failure to obtain now a 

 promise from Ou-e-Ia of a dog-team for his spring sledge journey, or 

 the loan of a team from the ships ; they would need all their dogs for 

 the early spring floe-whaling. 



During his stay on the whalers, unwillingly protracted to the 

 10th of the following month, he spent much time on the volumes of 

 his Arctic library, left on the Monticello in August; especially on 

 those works which would best aid him on this voyage and on his 

 proposed future voyage to the North Pole He did not fail to record 

 some strange reading of the thermometers, together with interest- 

 ing auroral and other atmospheric phenomena. On the 15th, the 

 mercurial thermometer on the Monticello's mainmast read, at 7 a. m., 

 — 44° ; at noon, — 43° ; at 7 p. m., — 45° ; while his own ethereal ther- 

 mometer read, at the same hours, — 37°, — 36°, — 38°. He believed 

 the last three records too high. He says : 



I am convinced of this by the test I hitely made at my winter quarters by 

 exposing:, one night, a dish of pure mercury to the out-door air. My tliermometers 

 arc numlH'rcd 0, J, 11, 111, IV, Y, VI, and VII. In tlic morning', Avlien my Xo. 

 llnniioiiicter stood at 40^.5, the mercury was frozen so hard that only the sharp 

 nails of the finger could be made to penetrate it. Undoubtedly 5° or (P liigher 

 toni])ernture would have left it in a frozen, unfluid state. Some mercury will 

 freeze at — 38*^ ; pure may not at even — 40<^. 



