COLORED SKIES. 
47 
will yet give one more manly tug to search the shores 
of Kennedy Channel for memorials of the lost; and ' 
then, our duties over here, and the brig still prison- 
bound, enter trustingly upon the task of our escape. 
“February 21, Wednesday.—To-day the crests of 
the northeast headland were gilded by true sunshine, 
and all who were able assembled on deck to greet it. 
The sun rose above the horizon, though still screened 
from our eyes by intervening hills. Although the 
powerful refraction of Polar latitudes heralds Ids direct 
appearance by brilliant light, this is as far removed 
from the glorious tints of day as it is from the mere 
twilight. Nevertheless, for the past ten days we have 
been watching the growing warmth of our landscape, as 
it emerged from buried shadow, through all the stages 
of distinctness of an India-ink washing, step by step, 
into the sharp, bold definition of our desolate harbor 
scene. We have marked every dash of color which the 
great Painter in his benevolence vouchsafed to us; and 
now the empurpled blues, clear, unmistakable, the 
spreading lake, the flickering yellow: peering at all 
these, poor wretches! every thing seemed superlative 
lustre and unsurpassable glory. We had so grovelled 
in darkness that we oversaw the light. 
“Mr. Wilson has caught cold and relapsed. Mr. 
Ohlsen, after a suspicious day, startles me by an attack 
of partial epilepsy; one of those strange indescribable 
spells, fits, seizures, whatever name the jargon gives 
them, which indicate deep disturbance. I conceal his 
case as far as I can; but it adds to my heavy pack of 
