on the 10th November, bearing upon a sledge the mortal remains of poor Mr. Bland (our chief engineer), who was found dead in his bed on the 7th. The burial service having been read, he was deposited in his frozen tomb, on which the wild flowers will never grow, and over which his relations can never mourn. We were all on board almost as one family, and any one taken from us was missed as one from the fireside at home. It was long before this sorrowful feeling throughout the ship could be shaken off. On the 14th the sun disappeared, and we were left in darkness; our skylights had long been covered over with snow, and by the light of our solitary dip we tried to pass the weary hours by reading, sleeping, and smoking. We were frozen in, in a fine harbour, surrounded by lofty granite hills, and on these were occasionally found a few ptarmigan, hares, and wild foxes; whenever the weather permitted, or we could at all see our way, we wandered over these dreary hills in search of a fresh mess. We varied our exercise with excursions on the ice in search of bears. But although exercise was so necessary for our existence, yet from the winds drawing through the straits and down our harbour as through a funnel, there were many days, and even weeks, when we could scarcely leave the ship. The men set fox-traps in all directions, and Mr. Petersen set seal-nets under the ice. The nets were not successful, but the traps gave an object for a walk. Magnetic observations were carried on throughout the winter;—the reading of one instrument, placed in a snow-house some 200 yards from the ship, being registered every hour night and day. On some of the wild winter nights, there was some risk in going even that distance from the ship. Christmas and New Year's days were spent with such rejoicing as in our situation we could make, and we entered upon the year 1859 with good health and spirits. Our dogs, upon which so much depended, were also in first-rate condition, and not one of them had died.
The sun returned to us on January 26th; the daylight soon began to increase; and by February 10th, we were all ready to start upon our first winter journey. Bad weather detained us until the 17th, when Captain M'Clintock and Young both left the ship; the Captain, with only two companions, Mr. Petersen (interpreter) and Thompson as dog-driver, to travel down the west coast of Boothia, to endeavour to obtain information, preparatory to the long spring journeys, from some natives supposed to live near the magnetic pole. Young was to cross Victoria Straits with a depôt of provisions, to enable him in the spring to search the coast of Prince of Wales Land, wherever it might trend. He returned on March 5.
The Captain's party hove in sight on the 14th, and we all ran out to meet him. He had found a tribe of natives at Cape Victoria, near the magnetic pole, and from them he learnt that some years ago a large ship was crushed by the ice, off the north-west coast of King William Land; that the people had come to the land, and had travelled down that coast to the estuary of the Great Fish River where they had died upon an island (Montreal Island); the natives had spears, bows and arrows, and other implements made of wood, besides a quantity of silver spoons
