I 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
The succeeding pages are very little else than a tran- 
script from my journal. It would have been easy to 
condense them into a more attractive form ; but they 
relate to the furthest limits of our cruise, " longarum 
meta viarum ;" and some of the topics which they em- 
brace may perhaps invite that sort of evidence which 
is best furnished by a contemporary record. 
''September 11, Wednesday. Snow, light and fleecy, 
covering the decks, and carried by our clothes into our 
little cabin. The moisture of the atmosphere con- 
denses over the beams, and trickles down over the 
lockers and bedding. We are still along side of the 
fixed ice off G-riffith's Island, and the British squad- 
ron under Commodore Austin are clustered together 
within three hundred yards of us. Penny, like an in- 
defatigable old trump, as he is, is out, pushing, work- 
ing, groping in the fog. The sludge ice, that had 
driven in around us and almost congealed under our 
stern, is now by the ebb of the tide, or at least its 
change, carried out again, although the wind still sets 
toward the floe. 
" September 12, Thursday. We have had a rough 
night. About 4 P.M., the heavy snow which had cov- 
ered our decks changed to a driving drift; the wind 
blew a gale from the northwest, and the thermometer 
fell as low as +16°. All the squadron of search, with 
the exception of Penny, were fastened by ice-anchors 
to the main ice ; but the great obscurity made us in- 
visible to each other. 
