158 
VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 
A.M. 9 . SHADE — 24?° . SUN + 24° 
10 . . . - 23° . . . +27° 
11 . . . - 22° . . . + 28|° 
Noon ... - 21° . . . +29° 
P.M. 3 . . . - 13° . . . + 19°. 
This evening, the officers performed the farces of the Citizen and the 
Mayor of Garratt, being the last of oar theatrical amusements for this winter, 
the season having now arrived when there would no longer be a want of oc- 
cupation for the men, and when it became necessary also to remove a part of 
the roofing to admit light to the officers’ cabins. Our poets were again set to 
work on this occasion, and an appropriate address was this evening spoken 
on the closing of the North Georgia Theatre, than which we may, without 
vanity, be permitted to say, none had ever done more real service to the com- 
munity for whose benefit it was intended. 
Mon. 20. Two of the Hecla’s seamen, who were employed on shore in digging 
stones for ballast, reported on the 20th, that they had seen a glaucous gull, 
or one of that species known to sailors by the name of “ burgomaster.” On 
being questioned respecting this bird, they strongly insisted on the impos- 
sibility of their having mistaken its kind, having been within twenty yards 
of it. As, however, these gulls cannot well subsist without open water, of 
which there was certainly none in the neighbourhood at that period, we con- 
jectured that it might have been an owl ; a bird that may, perhaps, remain on the 
island, even during the whole winter, as the abundance of mice (Mus Hudsonlus}, 
of which we constantly saw the tracks upon the snow, would furnish them with 
an ample supply of food. It was a novelty to us, however, to see any living animal 
in this desolate spot; for even the wolves and foxes, our occasional visitors 
during the winter, had almost entirely deserted us for several weeks past. 
The sick report of the Griper this day contained no less than ten cases, of 
which four were scorbutic, while the number of sick, or rather of conva- 
lescent, on board the Hecla, did not amount to half that number. On in- 
quiring into the probable cause of this extraordinary proportion of sick on 
board the Griper, which, just at this period, when their services began to be 
necessary to our re-equipment, was likely to prove of serious importance, I 
found, from Lieutenant Liddon, that the beams and bed-places on the Griper’s 
lower-deck had lately been in so damp a state, in consequence of the con- 
densation of the vapour upon them, and in spite of every endeavour to pre- 
vent it, that there could be little doubt of the cause to which the present 
/ 
1820. 
March. 
