November, 1S68.] DiscoveHes Mcide in 1868, 3G7 



The exposures to which lie had been agam subjected on his jour- 

 ney held him close for a day or more in his igloo, where he wrote on 

 the 25th : " Snatches only of sleep have I had for several nights. In 

 noting down my work as well as in taking observations, I have had 

 my right thumb frost-bitten, and that, when I did not know it." The 

 aurora of that date, the finest of all he had witnessed, he could not 

 attempt to describe. 



The 29th of the month saw him back in his old quarters on the 

 bay. In a letter to the President of the American Geographical 

 Society, written after his return to the United States, reviewing the 

 geographical explorations he had made on the two journeys of this 

 year, he claims the discoveries of a new inlet, lat. G7° N., long. 84^ 

 30' W., a few miles north of Norman Creek; a bay on the west side of 

 Fox Channel, lat. 69° N., long. 81^ 30' W.; a lake twenty-five miles 

 in length, lat. 68° 45' N., long. 82° W. ; and a second lake, in lat. 69° 

 35', fift}^ miles in length, with its two outlets, the lake running par- 

 allel with Fury and Hecla Strait. Also, two islands : one northwest 

 of the west end of that strait and the other at its east end. What he 

 considered accomplished of the most importance geographically, was 

 the completion of the coast-line around the northwest side of Melville 

 Peninsula to Cape Crozier. The bay now discovered was said to have 

 an entrance from Barrow S , lat. 73° 43' N., long. 83° W., and to 

 extend very nearly in a southerly direction to about the 71st degree 

 north latitude. The natives had assured him that at times they killed 

 in it five whales in a day, and that it abounded in the smooth-back 

 {Balcena mysticetus) and in narwhals and seals. It was free from ice 

 every summer, and promised to be of as much value to whalers as 

 Cumberland Sound. 



