OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
107 
furnished them, and of diverting the mind from the gloomy prospect which 1819. 
would sometimes obtrude itself on the stoutest heart. 
Immediately on our arrival in harbour, Captain Sabine had employed 
himself in selecting a place for the observatory, which was erected in a con- 
venient spot, about seven hundred yards to the westward of the ships. It 
was also considered advisable immediately to set about building a house 
near the beach, for the reception of the clocks and instruments. For this 
purpose we made use of a quantity of fir-plank, which was intended for the 
construction of spare boats, and which was so cut as not to injure it for that 
purpose. The ground was so hard frozen that it required great labour to 
dig holes for the upright posts which formed the support of the sides. The 
walls of this house being double, with moss placed between the two, a high 
temperature could, even in the severest weather which we might be doomed 
to experience, be kept up in it without difficulty by a single stove. 
Among the many fortunate circumstances which had attended us during 
this first season of our navigation, there was none more striking than the 
opportune time at which the ships were securely placed in harbour ; for on 
the very night of our arrival, the 26th of September, the thermometer fell 
to —1°; and, on the following day, the sea was observed from the hills 
to be quite frozen over, as far as the eye could reach ; nor was any open 
water seen after this period. During the first three weeks in October, how- 
ever, we remarked that the young ice, near the mouth of the harbour, was 
occasionally squeezed up very much by the larger floes, so that the latter 
must still have had some space left, in which to acquire motion : but after 
that time the sea was entirely covered with one uniform surface of solid and 
motionless ice. 
After our arrival in port, we saw several rein-deer, and a few coveys of 
grouse ; but the country is so destitute of every thing like cover of any kind, 
that our sportsmen were not successful in their hunting excursions, and we 
procured only three rein-deer, previously to the migration of these and the 
other animals from the island, which took place before the close of the month 
of October, leaving only the wolves and foxes to bear us company during 
the winter. The full-grown deer, which we killed in the autumn, gave us 
from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and seventy pounds of meat 
each, and a fawn weighed eighty-four pounds. 
On the 1st of October, Captain Sabine’s servant having been at some dis- 
tance from the ships, to examine a fox-trap, was pursued by a large white 
P 2 
