78 
WINTER T R A V E L. 
tlie stopper down the whiskey-tin and gave you a tot 
of it.’ 
“ The general tone of the conversation around is like 
this specimen. I am glad to hear my shipmates talk¬ 
ing together again, for we have of late been silent. 
The last year’s battle commenced at this time a year 
ago, and it is natural the men should recall it. Had I 
succeeded in pushing my party aci'oss the bay, our 
success would have been unequalled; it was the true 
plan, the best-conceived, and in fact the only one by 
which, after the death of my dogs, I could hope to 
carry on the search. The temperatures were frightful, 
—40° to —56°; but my expei’ience of last year on the 
rescue-party, where we travelled eighty miles in sixty 
odd hours, almost without a halt, yet without a frost¬ 
bite, shows that such temperatures are no obstacle to 
travel, provided you have the necessary practical 
knowledge of the equipment and conduct of your 
party. I firmly believe that no natural cold as yet 
known can arrest travel. The whole story of this 
winter illustrates it. I have both sledged and walked 
sixty and seventy miles over the roughest ice, in re¬ 
peated journeys, at fifty degrees below zero, and the 
two parties from the south reached our brig in the dead 
of winter, after being exposed for three hundred miles 
to the same horrible cold. 
“The day has been beautifully clear, and so mild 
that our mid-day thermometers gave but 7°. This bears 
badly upon the desertion of Godfi-ey, for the probabili¬ 
ties are that he will find Hans’s buffalo-i’obe at the hut, 
