CHAPTER VIII. 
THE DELECTABLE MOUNTAINS—REVIEW OF MARCH—THE DESERTER 
AGAIN—HIS ESCAPE—GODFREY'S MEAT—CONVALESCENT. 
“ March 25, Sunday.—A hard-working, busy Sunday 
it has been,—a cheerless, scurvy-breeding day; and now 
by the midnight, which is as it were the evening of its 
continued light, I read the thermometers unaided ex¬ 
cept by the crimson fires of the northern horizon. It 
is, moreover, cold again, —37°, and the enemy has a 
harder grip on my grasshopper. Bonsall and Kane 
took the entire home-work on themselves to-day, that 
Petersen might have a chance of following rabbit-tracks 
up Mary River. He succeeded in shooting one large 
hare and a couple of ptarmigan,—thus giving our sick 
a good allowance for one day more. 
“ Refraction with all its magic is back upon us; the 
‘Delectable Mountains’ appear again; and, as the sun 
has now worked his way to the mai'gin of the north¬ 
western horizon, we can see the blaze stealing out from 
the black portals of these uplifted hills, as if there was 
truly beyond it a celestial gate. 
“I do not know what preposterous working of brain 
