462 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



Nothing worthy of notice occurred till the 29th, when a patch of ice a 

 v^y-**/ mile broad separated from the outer margin of our barrier and drifted 

 ' away. The canal formed by laying sand on the ice was now quite through 

 in most places, shewing that the plan would, in this latitude at least, always 

 ensure a ship's escape at an earlier season than by the regular course of 

 nature, provided it could be carried the whole way down to the open 

 water. 



Wed. 30. I am now under the disagreeable necessity of entering on a subject, 

 which I had at one time ventured to hope need scarcely have occu- 

 pied any part of this Narrative : I mean that of the scurvy, some slight, 

 but unequivocal, symptoms of which disease were this day reported to 

 me by Mr. Edwards, to have appeared among four or five of the Fury's 

 men, rendering it necessary, for the first time during the voyage, to have 

 recourse to anti-scorbutic treatment among the seamen or marines. During 

 our first winter, the only instance in which any such symptoms had been 

 discovered occurred in Mr. Jermain, the purser of the Hecla, who 

 however recovered by the usual treatment, as the summer advanced. 

 This short and dubious season being ended, the carpenter and boat- 

 swain of the Hecla were also affected ; and in the course of the second 

 winter Mr. Jermain's complaint returned with greater severity. In the 

 months of February and March, Messrs. Henderson, Halse, and Scallon, of 

 the Fury, were occasionally disposed to scurvy ; Mr. Edwards was for a week 

 or two pretty severely attacked by it, and my own gums becoming some- 

 what livid rendered a short course of additional lemon-juice necessary to 

 restore them. These cases however shortly and permanently recovered ; 

 but in the spring and even as late as the month of June, when there was 

 reason to hope that every symptom of this kind would have been removed by 

 the increased warmth and cheerfulness of the season, and the change of 

 diet afforded by the game, the disease again made its appearance in the 

 carpenter and boatswain of the Hecla, and soon after attacked the gunner 

 and Mr. Fife, the Greenland master. These cases which were much more 

 severe than any we had before experienced, had not now recovered, when 

 the gums of four or five of the Fury's men betrayed this insidious disease 

 lurking within them, and made it necessary to administer lemon-juice to 

 them in more copious quantities than ordinary. 



It will perhaps be considered a curious and singular fact in the history of 

 sea-scurvy, that during the whole of the preceding part of this voyage, none 



