PROGRESS OF SPRING. 
235 
promotion by shooting two deer, Tulchulc, the first yet 
shot. ' We have now on hand one hundred and forty- 
five pounds of fine venison, a very gift of grace to our 
diseased crew. But, indeed, we are not likely to want 
for wholesome food, now that the night is gone, which 
made our need of it so pressing. On the first of May, 
those charming little migrants the snow-birds, ultima 
coelicolum, which only left us on the 4tli of November, 
returned to our ice-crusted rocks, whence they seem to 
‘ fill the sea and air with their sweet jargoning.’ Seal 
literally abound too. I have leanied to prefer this flesh 
to the reindeer’s, at least that of the female seal, which 
has not the fetor of her mate’s. 
“By the 12th, the sides of the Advance were free 
from snow, and her rigging clean and dry. The floe is 
rapidly undergoing its wonderful processes of decay; 
and the level ice measures but six feet in thickness. 
To-day they report a burgomaster gull seen: one of the 
earliest but surest indications of returning open water. 
It is not strange, ice-leaguered exiles as we are, that 
we observe and exult in these things. They are the 
pledges of renewed life, the olive-branch of this dreary 
waste: we feel the spring in all our pulses. 
“ The first thing I did after my return was to send 
McGary to Life-boat Cove, to see that our boat and its 
buried provisions were secure. He made the journey 
by dog-sledge in four days, and has returned reporting 
that all is safe: an important help for us, should 
this heavy ice of our more northern .prison refuse to 
release us. 
