ile the winter of 1850-51, none have more agreeable
recollections than his dinner-parties.

It may not here be out of place to describe the ordinary clothing worn,
as yet, by officers and men: the temperature ranging often as low as
35 deg. below zero, with strong gales:--

_Clothing when indoors._

1 Flannel shirt with sleeves.
1 Cotton ditto.
1 Waistcoat with sleeves, lined with flannel.
1 Drawers flannel.
1 Pair trowsers, box-cloth, lined with flannel.
1 Pair thick stockings.
1 Do. thin ditto.
1 Horse-hair sole.
1 Pair carpet boots.

_Additional for walking_.

Box-cloth pea jacket.
Welsh wig.
Seal-skin cap.
Beaver-skin mitts.
Shawl or comfortable.
Men with tender faces required a cloth face-cover in the wind.

_January, 1851._--That we were all paler, was perceptible to every one;
but only a few had lost flesh. A very little exercise was found to tire
one very soon, and appetites were generally on the decrease. For four
hours a-day, we all, men and officers, made a point of facing the
external air, let the temperature be what it would; and this rule was
carefully adhered to, until the return of the sun naturally induced us
to lengthen our excursions. Only on three occasions was the weather too
severe for communication between the vessels, and the first of these
occurred in the close of December and commencement of January. To show
one's face outboard, was then an impossibility; the gale swept before
it a body of snow higher than our trucks, and hid every thing a few
yards off from sight. The "Resolute," three hundred yards off, was
invisible; and the accumulation of snow upon our housing, threatened to
burst it in. The floe seemed to tremble as the gale shrieked over its
surface, and tore up the old snow-drifts and deposited them afresh. A
wilder scene man never saw: it was worthy of the Arctic regions, and a
fit requiem for the departing year.

[Headnote: _AURORAS AND CLOUDLESS SKIES._]

After one of these gales, walking on the floe was a work of much
difficulty, in consequence of the irregular surface it presented to the
foot. The snow-ridges, called sastrugi by the Russians, run (where
unobstructed by obstacles which caused a counter-current) in parallel
lines, waving and winding together, and so close and hard on the edges,
that the foot, huge and clumsy as it was with warm clothing and thick
soles, slipped about most he