miles,
the entire circuit of the bay, without observing any trace of Franklin
having visited the neighbourhood; and as frost-bites began to attack
our faces, we erected our tent as expeditiously as possible, and in it
took shelter from the wind and cold. The pungent smoke of the lignum
vitae kept us weeping, as long as the cooking went on; and between the
annoyance of it, the cold, and fatigue, we all dropped off to sleep,
indifferent to a falling temperature, prowling bears, or a violent
gale, which threatened to blow us from the beach on which we had
pitched our fluttering tent.

Next day, my work being done, we struck homeward for the squadron, and
reached it the same evening, the said 12th of October being the last
autumnal travelling of our squadron.

The following week the temperature rallied a little, and the weather
was generally finer; our preparations for wintering were nearly
completed, and the poor sickly sun barely for two hours a day rose
above the heights of Griffith's Island.

To our great joy, on the 17th of October, Captain Penny came over from
Assistance Harbour. He had happily decided on taking up the search of
Wellington Channel; and an understanding was come to, that his squadron
should carry out the travelling operations next spring on that route,
whilst our squadron accomplished the farthest possible distance towards
Melville Island, and from Cape Walker to the south-west.

Captain P. expressed it as his opinion that the Americans had not
escaped out of Barrow's Strait, in consequence of a sudden gale
springing up from the southward, shortly after they had passed his
winter quarters. This supposition we of course afterwards found to be
true, although at the time we all used to speak of the Americans as
being safe and snug in New York, instead of drifting about in the ice,
within a few miles of us, as was really the case.

With Penny's return to his vessels, may be said to have closed all the
Arctic operations of the year 1850. Our upper decks were now covered
in; stoves and warming apparatus set at work; boats secured on the ice;
all the lumber taken off the upper decks, to clear them for exercise in
bad weather; masts and yards made as snug as possible; rows of posts
placed to show the road in the darkness and snow-storms from ship to
ship; holes cut through the ice into the sea, to secure a ready supply
of water, in the event of fire; arrangements made to insure cleanliness
of ships and c