530 LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
from the success of the sportsmen with their guns, that they 
could have dispensed with the fish altogether. They, however, 
looked forward to their casks of fish, as a resource for the ensuing 
winter, when the birds and animals would become scarce, am* 
little was to be obtained by the hunter, or from the natives, but 
the flesh of the seal and the walrus; and perhaps, occasionally, 
a lump of musk ox beef, with which, however, some rather un¬ 
pleasant associations were accompanied. 
On the 25th, a party came to the ship, having left their sledge 
about four miles distant, it being too heavy for them to drag 
along; the road being exceedingly bad and rugged, owing in 
a great measure to the decayed state of the ice, which broke 
under them almost at every step. This party had been twenty- 
two hours without any refreshment, and eighteen on their legs, 
with a heavy load dragging behind them. Each man had taken 
his loaf with him on the sledge, but the bread soon got so sa¬ 
turated with water, as to render it not fit to be eaten : the men 
themselves were sometimes up to their middle in water, and in 
this deplorable state, they were obliged to tramp it over the 
crackling ice, floundering every minute their whole length into 
some pool of water, with not even a morsel of food, to support 
them on their march. 
At one o’clock, Mr. Thom, and a party of eight, went for the 
sledge, and returned at six: even these eight men found the 
labor of dragging the sledge to be almost too much for them, 
what then must it have been for only five, and one of them very 
ill ? This continual and excessive labor excited a spirit of 
discontent amongst the men, which perhaps, but for the influence 
exercised over them by Commander Ross, would have broken 
out into open mutiny. They looked upon it as a species of 
labor, which they were not hired to perform, and which had no 
immediate reference to the discipline of the ship ; still, how¬ 
ever, they might not have displayed so great an unwillingness 
and repugnance to the performance of the labor, had a corre¬ 
sponding disposition been shown on the part of Capt. Ross, to 
support them through their fatigue, by that attention to their 
personal wants, and to the support of their physical strength, 
