1. The time crept away with indescribable monotony. The crew performed their heavy labours, but of events there were none. The only change in our position was the constant decay of the buttresses and walls of ice, until the frozen sea lay like a snowy chaos before us. Pure sharp-edged ice was nowhere to be seen; the edges were no longer transparent; evaporation had transformed the surface into a kind of glacier-snow. June 1, we had the greatest degree of cold of the month, the thermometer marking 13° F.; but on the last day it rose to 32·2° F.; the mean temperature being 31·1° F. Every week brought us promises of summer. On the 1st the black-bulb thermometer reached 98° F.; on the 14th rain fell for the first time; on the 16th the temperature at 9 o’clock A.M., was 41·5° F., on the 26th 46·4° F., and on the 29th even 50·2° F. On these days the air seemed to have the pleasant mildness of southern climes, and when there was no wind we felt an oppressive sultriness. Wreaths of mist moved along the icy wastes which glowed with sunlight, while the long dark lines of ice-wall lay in deep shadow. The air was filled with flocks of birds; day and night we heard the shrill cries of the Robber-gulls, ever and anon mingled with the barking of the dogs in full pursuit of them. Flocks of rotges congregated without fear in the narrow basins of distant “leads;” and the “great gulls,” shunning companionship, sat for hours on the top of an ice-cliff, or in the middle of a floe. 2. No one who has not actually seen it, can imagine the blaze of light in the Arctic regions on clear days, or the glow which floats sometimes over the cold white ice-floes, with their outlines in constant vibration, while refraction transforms the icebergs into a variety of shapes. The sun’s power is sometimes so great as to blister the skin in a few hours, and the glare from snow and ice produces snow-blindness, if the eyes be not carefully protected. At a little distance the sea appears to be of a deep black colour, though it still preserves its ultramarine hues in the narrow “leads;” even the pure blue of the heavens may be called almost black when compared with the dazzling sheen of the ice. In the middle of June there was an incessant dripping and oozing in the ice-world, and streams of thaw-water flowed into the open fissures. By the end of the month the surface of the ice resembled snow; and even at some depth it was viscous, instead of brittle and hard as glass, as it is during the colder season. Streams of thaw-water ran through the softened and saturated snow. Small lakes were formed on the levels, and swamps of snow, wearing a traitorous exterior, surrounded their borders. In the summer of 1873 we observed a vertical decrease of five or six feet in the thickness of the ice; but this diminution in thickness was from the surface downwards, while in the sea itself there was little or no thawing, because the temperature of its surface was still below zero. The