and that they worked in a similar way between the
ships for seven or eight hours a day. The road was, however, very good
at this time, and the dogs the best that could be procured.

The wind settling to the southward for a few days near the end of April,
brought an increased, and, to us a comfortable degree of warmth; and it
was considered an event of some interest, that the snow which fell on
the 29th dissolved as it lay on our decks, being the first time that it
had done so this season. We now also ventured to take off some of the
hatches for an hour or two in the day, and to admit some fresh air, a
luxury which we had not known for six months. The Esquimaux, about this
time, began to separate more than before, according to their usual
custom in the spring; some of them, and especially our Winter Island
acquaintance, setting off to the little islands called Oolglit, and
those in our neighbourhood removing to the northeast end of Igloolik, to
a peninsula called _Keiyuk-tarruoke_, to which, the open water was
somewhat nearer. These people now became so much incommoded by the
melting of their snow-huts, that they were obliged to substitute skins
as the roofs, retaining, however, the sides and part of the passages of
the original habitations. These demi-tents were miserable enough while
in this state, some of the snow continually falling in, and the floor
being constantly wet by its thawing.

Favourable as the first part of the month of May had appeared with
respect to temperature, its close was by no means equally promising, and
on the first of June, at two A.M., the thermometer stood at +8 deg. This
unusually low temperature, much exceeding in severity anything we had
experienced at Melville Island at the same season, rendered it
necessary to defer for a time a journey which it was proposed that
Captain Lyon should undertake, across the land to the westward at the
head of Quilliam Creek, and thence, by means of the ice, along the
shores of the Polar Sea, in the direction towards Akkoolee. The object
of this journey, like that of most of the others which had been
performed in various directions, was to acquire all the information
within our reach of those parts of the continental coast to which the
ships were denied access; and it was hoped that, at the coming season,
some judgment might be formed of the probable state of the ice along
that shore in the summer, by which the future movements of the Fury
might be influenc