2. The experience of the past greatly strengthened all the grounds and motives which so readily presented themselves to abandon our helpless vessel in the following summer and attempt the return to Europe by means of sledges and boats. If there had been no other reason for this resolution, regard for our health would have dictated the step. Our supply of lemon-juice was so reduced, as to leave scarcely a doubt as to the necessity of attempting to return. But amid these prudential considerations, we were filled with fear lest we should be unable to explore the mysterious land we had discovered. 3. The daylight now began to fail. On the 9th of September the sun set at 8.30 and the stars were visible at night. About the middle of the month lamps were kept burning all the night through in our quarters below, and our environment, never very animated, again wore the aspect of the dark realm of ice. The visits of birds became rarer, although they did not quite leave us as long as there was any open water near. The divers and auks had already disappeared. They flew in long lines southward, and as they whizzed past us through the rigging of the ship, we acknowledged the superiority of these little creatures to us and to our ship, which was never to hoist its sails again. The ice-birds, and the robber-gulls still remained with us. We once shot a rose-coloured gull (Ross’s gull), said to belong only to North America and Iceland. On the 28th we saw the last snow-bunting. The first aurora was seen on the 22nd, and during the winter its light fell not merely on the Frozen Ocean but on the distant Franz-Josef’s Land, showing us that we were not drifting away from it. By the end of the month we had drifted to the eightieth degree of latitude, nearly; and every cliff of the land, even the most insignificant, emerging at a distance from the ice, had charms enough to call us all on deck.