6 VOYAGE TO THE POLAR SEA. JUNE 



has been higher for the last forty days, the conducting 

 power of the frozen ground must be very small. 



* A light mist prevented our seeing the depot, so we 

 remain in an anxious uncertainty about Aldrich's party. 

 ' A flock of a dozen king-ducks arrived from the 

 southward, the first that we have seen. They appa- 

 rently have not paired yet. They remained near us 

 for two or three hours, but were too wild to allow the 

 sportsmen to approach near enough for a shot. Dr. 

 Moss has fixed a wooden decoy-duck in one of the 

 water-pools near the ship ; but the passing birds are 

 not readily attracted. 



4 When we compare the fairly-cleared black hills of 

 the United States Eange with our snow-covered ground 

 we cannot wonder at the absence of game in our 

 neighbourhood. No bird or beast would remain where 

 there is scarcely a bare stone on which to rest itself 

 when it sights the prospect of well-vegetated pastures 

 near Cape Eichardson.' 



The ducks appeared to follow immediately on the 

 setting-in of the thaw. At Floeberg Beach they 

 arrived on the 22nd of June, the day after the first 

 pool of water was observed on the land. At Discovery 

 Bay they were seen on the 12th ; but there the thaw 

 was also earlier, the ravines commencing to run on 

 the llth. At Polaris Bay in 1872 a few streamlets of 

 water were observed by Captain Buddington as early 

 as the 3rd of June ; three days afterwards the ducks 

 arrived. 



' 23rd. To-day, with the temperature risen to 

 37, the snow has become so soft that, except in the 

 deepest snow-drifts, our feet sink through it to the ice 



