SNOW BLINDNESS. 
361 
as long, nor, indeed, do I seem to need the same quan- 
tity of sleep as when we had the alternation of light 
and darkness. On the other hand, I think our long 
Arctic night solicited a more than common ration of 
the same restorative blessing, though my journal has 
shown you that our waking energies during that peri- 
od were not so heavily taxed as to require more than 
their usual intermission.” 
The day after this entry superadded the visitation 
of snow blindness to our trials. Four of the party 
were attacked severely, myself among the rest; so 
severely, indeed, as to make it impossible for me to 
write, and, what was much more important in the es- 
timation of our scurvy patients, impossible for me to 
hunt. The brief notes which were made in my journal 
by the kindness of a brother officer speak of our sensi- 
ble approach toward a final disengagement from the 
ice-field. Though the winds were generally from the 
southwest, our drift tended very plainly to the south : 
in one day, we reduced our latitude eighteen miles, 
passing at the same time nearly a degree of longitude, 
twenty-two miles to the east. The ice, too, was be- 
coming more infiltrated, and the heavy snow-banks 
that surrounded our vessel were saturated with water. 
Spring was doing its office. 
