During the year that we were absent from the verge of civilization, as the winter harbor of the whalers may be considered, we had travelled 2,819 geographical, or 3,251 statute miles, most of which was entirely over unexplored territory, constituting the longest sledge journey ever made, both as to time and distance, and the only extended sledge journey ever accomplished in the Arctic, except such as have been made through countries well known and over routes almost as thoroughly established as post-roads. Our sledge journey stands conspicuous as the only one ever made through the entire course of an Arctic winter, and one regarded by the natives as exceptionally cold, as the amount of suffering encountered by those remaining at Depot Island attested, and further confirmed, as we afterward learned, by the experience of those who wintered at Wager River, where many deaths occurred, attributable to the unusual severity of the season. The party successfully withstood the lowest temperature ever experienced by white men in the field, recording one observation of -71 degrees Fahrenheit, sixteen days whose average was 100 degrees below the freezing-point, and twenty-seven which registered below -60 degrees Fahrenheit, during most of which the party travelled. In fact, the expedition never took cold into consideration, or halted a single day on that account. During the entire journey its reliance for food, both for man and beast, may be said to have been solely upon the resources of the country, as the expedition started with less than one month's rations, and it is the first in which the white men of an expedition voluntarily lived exclusively upon the same fare as its Esquimau assistants, thus showing that white men can safely adapt themselves to the climate and life of the Esquimaux, and prosecute their journeys in any season or under such circumstances as would the natives of the country themselves. The expedition was the first to make a summer search over the route of the lost crews of the 'Erebus' and 'Terror', and while so doing buried the remains of every member of that fated party above ground, so that no longer the bleached bones of those unfortunate explorers whiten the coasts of King William Land and Adelaide Peninsula as an eternal rebuke to civilization, but all have, for the time being at least, received decent and respectful interment.