"Sunday, June 10th. Oddly enough we have had no cases of snow-blindness on board, with the exception of the doctor, who, a couple of days ago, after we had been playing at ball, got a touch of it in the evening. The tears poured from his eyes for some time, but he soon recovered. Rather a humiliating trick of fate that he should be the first to suffer from this ailment." Subsequently we had a few isolated cases of slight snow-blindness, so that one or two of our men had to go about with dark spectacles; but it was of little importance and was due to their not thinking it worth while to take the necessary precautions. "Monday, June 11th. To-day I made a joyful discovery. I thought I had begun my last bundle of cigars, and calculated that by smoking one a day they would last a month, but found quite unexpectedly a whole box in my locker. Great rejoicing! it will help to while away a few more months, and where shall we be then? Poor fellow, you are really at a low ebb! 'To while away time'--that is an idea that has scarcely ever entered your head before. It has always been your great trouble that time flew away so fast, and now it cannot go fast enough to please you. And then so addicted to tobacco--you wrap yourself in clouds of smoke to indulge in your everlasting day dreams. Hark to the south wind, how it whistles in the rigging; it is quite inspiriting to listen to it. On Midsummer-eve we ought, of course, to have had a bonfire as usual, but from my diary it does not seem to have been the sort of weather for it. "Saturday, June 23, 1894. "'Mid the shady vales and the leafy trees, How sweet the approach of the summer breeze! When the mountain slopes in the sunlight gleam, And the eve of St. John comes in like a dream. The north wind continues with sleet. Gloomy weather. Drifting south. 81° 43' north latitude; that is, 9' southward since Monday. "I have seen many Midsummer-eves under different skies, but never such a one as this. So far, far from all that one associates with this evening. I think of the merriment round the bonfires at home, hear the scraping of the fiddle, the peals of laughter, and the salvoes of the guns, with the echoes answering from the purple-tinted heights. And then I look out over this boundless, white expanse into the fog and sleet and the driving wind. Here is truly no trace of midsummer merriment. It is a gloomy lookout altogether! Midsummer is past--and now the days are shortening again, and the long night of winter approaching, which, maybe, will find us as far advanced as it left us.