190 Captain Parry and Mr Fisher’s Journals of a 
solate region, and the livelier aspect of the happy land which we 
had left behind us.” — Captain Parry s Journal , p. 124. 
It will, we doubt not, be considered as a very interesting, as 
well as an important result of this expedition, that the human 
frame has been found capable of preserving a healthy and 
cheerful existence, in a climate whose mean temperature is near- 
ly the zero of Fahrenheit’s scale, or 32° below the freezing 
point, and where the mercury occasionally descends so low as 
54° beneath zero. Such a severe climate was never supposed 
to exist even in the imaginations of the poets, and the Pole 
itself, which was proverbially the point where the hoary desola- 
tions of the Arctic regions had concentrated their influence, 
was considered to have a mean temperature of only -f- 32° of 
Fahrenheit. Nay, it is remarkable, (as if the observers had 
conspired to give point to the antithesis,) that the mean tempera- 
ture of the four summer months , at Melville Island , is exactly 
the same as the mean temperature (f the year formerly assigned 
to the North Pole itsef! 
The greatest cold experienced by Captain Parry was quite 
tolerable in calm weather, and we believe that less inconvenience 
was experienced from it by the party, than has often been felt 
in Canada and Siberia. One of the crew of the Griper, whq 
had lost his way in a hunting excursion, returned with one of 
his hands much frost-bitten. It was at first as hard as a piece 
of marble, but by successful treatment, it recovered so far, that 
he lost only a part of each of the four fingers of his left hand. 
Another sailor, who had his hands frost-bitten, came on board 
in such a state, that when his hands were immersed in a tub of 
cold water, for the purpose of being thawed, the cold communi- 
cated to the water created a film of ice on its surface. The 
skin and nails came off some of the fingers, and the rest were 
amputated. One of the most remarkable effects, however, of 
severe cold, was its influence on the mental as well as the cor- 
poreal faculties. On the 5th of October, two of the gentlemen 
of the expedition, who had exposed themselves to severe frost in 
the ardour of pursuing a wounded stag, were sent for by Cap- 
tain Parry. Upon arriving in his cabin, 
“ They looked wild,, spoke thick and indistinctly, and it was im- 
possible to draw from them a rational answer to any of our ques- 
tions. After being on board for a short time, the mental faculties 
appeared gradually to return with the returning circulation ; and it 
