nded on Red Beach.

[014] This article of our equipment contains a large proportion of
nutriment in a small weight and compass, and is therefore invaluable on
such occasions. The process, which requires great attention, consists in
drying large thin slices of the lean of the meat over the smoke of
wood-fires, then pounding it, and lastly mixing it with about an equal
weight of its own fat. In this state it is quite ready for use, without
farther cooking.

[015] The merits of this simple but valuable invention being now too
well known to require any detailed account of the experiments, it is
only necessary for me to remark, in this place, that the compass, having
the plate attached to it, gave, under all circumstances, the correct
magnetic bearing.

[016] It is remarkable, that the Esquimaux word for boot is very like
this--Kameega.

[017] I find it to be the universal opinion among the most experienced
of our whalers, that there is much less ice met with, of late years, in
getting to the northward, in these latitudes, than formerly was the
case. Mr. Scoresby, to whose very valuable local information, contained
in his "Account of the Arctic Regions," I have been greatly indebted on
this occasion, mentions the circumstance as a generally received fact.

[018] It was probably some such gale as this which has given to
Hakluyt's Headland, in an old Dutch chart, the appellation of "Duyvel's
Hoek."

[019] I have been thus particular in noticing the Hecla's position,
because our observations would appear to be, with one exception, the
most northern on record at that time. The Commissioners of Longitude, in
their memorial to the king in council, in the year 1821, consider that
the "progress of discovery has not arrived northward, according to any
well-authenticated accounts, so far as eighty-one degrees of north
latitude." Mr. Scoresby states his having observed in lat. 81 deg. 12' 42".

[020] Had we succeeded in reaching the higher latitudes, where the
change of the sun's altitude during the twenty-four hours is still less
perceptible, it would have been essentially necessary to possess the
certain means of knowing this; since an error of twelve hours of time
would have carried us, when we intended to return, on a meridian
opposite to, or 180 deg. from, the right one. To obviate the possibility of
this, we had some chronometers constructed by Messrs. Parkinson and
Frodsham, of which the hour-hand made only one revolutio