26 CREATURE COMFORTS. 
own was the berth I have spoken of before. It was 
a sort of hunk — a right-angled excavation, of six feet 
by two feet eight in horizontal dimensions, let into 
the side of the vessel, with a height of something less 
than a yard. My first care was to keep water out, my 
second to make it warm. A bundle of tacks, and a 
few yards of India-rubber cloth, soon made me an im- 
penetrable casing over the entire wood-work. Upon 
this were laid my Mormon wolf-skin and a somewhat 
ostentatious Astracan fur cloak, a relic of former travel. 
Two little wooden shelves held my scanty library ; a 
third supported a reading lamp, or, upon occasion, a 
Berzelius' argand, to be lighted when the dampness 
made an increase of heat necessary. My watch ticked 
from its particular nail, and a more noiseless monitor, 
my thermometer, occupied another. My ink-bottle 
was suspended, pendulum fashion, from a hook, and to 
one long string was fastened, like the ladle of a street- 
pump, my entire toilet, a tooth-brush, a comb, and a 
hair-brush. 
Now, when all these distributions had been happily 
accomplished, and I crawled in from the wet, and cold, 
and disorder of without, through a slit in the India- 
rubber cloth, to the very centre of my complicated re- 
sources, it would be hard for any one to realize the 
quantity of comfort which I felt I had manufactured. 
My lamp burned brightly ; little or no water distilled 
from the roof ; my furs warmed me into satisfaction ; 
and I realized that I was sweating myself out of my 
preliminary cold, and could temper down at pleasure 
the abruptness of my acclimation. 
From this time I began my journal. At first its 
entries were little else than a selfish record of personal 
liscomforts. It was less than a fortnight since 1 was 
