w and
sky. To make it the more dreary, a thick fog came on as the night
advanced; and as this prevented our taking any mark more than
fifty or a hundred yards ahead, we had to place the compass, by
which we were now entirely travelling, upon the ground every five
minutes; and as it traversed with great sluggishness, we made a
very crooked and uncertain course. For more than two hours we did
not pass a single spot of uncovered ground, nor even a stone
projecting above the snow.

The fog continued too thick to allow us to move till six A.M., at
which time we resumed our journey. There was a broad and distant
haze-bow of very white and dazzling light directly opposite the
sun. The weather being still too foggy to see more than a quarter
of a mile ahead, it was with considerable difficulty that we could
proceed on a tolerably straight course. To effect this, it was
necessary to determine the point on which we were walking by the
bearing of the sun, which was still visible, and the apparent
time, and then to take a mark ahead by which our course was to be
directed. From the thickness of the weather, however, it was
necessary to repeat this operation every five or ten minutes,
which, together with the uniform whiteness and intense glare of
the snow, became so extremely painful to the eyes, that Mr. Fisher
and myself, who went ahead as guides, soon became affected with
snow blindness, and the headmost man at the cart, whose business
it was constantly to watch our motions, began to suffer in a
similar manner from the same cause.

It may, perhaps, be conceived, then, under these circumstances,
how pleasing was the relief afforded by our seeing, at eight A.M.,
a stripe of black or uncovered land ahead, which proved to be the
bank of a ravine fifty or sixty feet deep and three hundred yards
wide, on the north side of which we pitched the tents, having made
good only one mile and a half, the snow being so soft and deep as
to make it difficult to drag the cart through it.

The latitude observed here was 75 deg. 22' 43", and the longitude, by
the chronometer, 111 deg. 14' 26"; in which situation a cylinder of
tin, containing an account of our visit, was deposited under a
pile of stones eight feet high and seven feet broad at the base.

The wind increased to a fresh breeze from the S.S.E. on the 6th,
with a sharp frost, making it very cold in the tents, which we
therefore struck at four A.M., and at the distance of half a mile