Box-cloth pea jacket. Welsh wig. Seal-skin cap. Beaver-skin mitts. Shawl or comfortable. Men with tender faces required a cloth face-cover in the wind. _January, 1851._--That we were all paler, was perceptible to every one; but only a few had lost flesh. A very little exercise was found to tire one very soon, and appetites were generally on the decrease. For four hours a-day, we all, men and officers, made a point of facing the external air, let the temperature be what it would; and this rule was carefully adhered to, until the return of the sun naturally induced us to lengthen our excursions. Only on three occasions was the weather too severe for communication between the vessels, and the first of these occurred in the close of December and commencement of January. To show one's face outboard, was then an impossibility; the gale swept before it a body of snow higher than our trucks, and hid every thing a few yards off from sight. The "Resolute," three hundred yards off, was invisible; and the accumulation of snow upon our housing, threatened to burst it in. The floe seemed to tremble as the gale shrieked over its surface, and tore up the old snow-drifts and deposited them afresh. A wilder scene man never saw: it was worthy of the Arctic regions, and a fit requiem for the departing year. [Headnote: _AURORAS AND CLOUDLESS SKIES._] After one of these gales, walking on the floe was a work of much difficulty, in consequence of the irregular surface it presented to the foot. The snow-ridges, called sastrugi by the Russians, run (where unobstructed by obstacles which caused a counter-current) in parallel lines, waving and winding together, and so close and hard on the edges, that the foot, huge and clumsy as it was with warm clothing and thick soles, slipped about most helplessly; and we, therefore, had to wait until a change of wind had, by a cross drift, filled up the ridges thus formed, before we took long walks; and on the road between the vessels parties were usually employed mending the roads. With one portion of the phenomena of the North Sea, we were particularly disappointed--and this was the aurora. The colours, in all cases, were vastly inferior to those seen by us in far southern latitudes, a pale golden or straw colour being the prevailing hue; the most striking part of it was its apparent proximity to the earth. Once or twice the auroral coruscations accompanied a moon in its last quarter, and generally previous to bad weather. On one occasion, in Christmas-week, the light played about the edge of a low vapour which hung at a very small altitude over us; it never, on this occasion, lit up the whole under-surface of the said clouds, but formed a series of concentric semicircles of light, with dark spaces between, which waved, glistened, and vanished, like moonlight upon a heaving, but unbroken sea.