“_November 7, Monday._--The darkness is coming on with insidious steadiness, and its advances can be perceived only by comparing one day with its fellow of some time back. We still read the thermometer at noonday without a light, and the black masses of the hills are plain for about five hours with their glaring patches of snow; but all the rest is darkness. Lanterns are always on the spar-deck, and the lard-lamps never extinguished below. The stars of the sixth magnitude shine out at noonday. “Our darkness has ninety days to run before we shall get back again even to the contested twilight of to-day. Altogether, our winter will have been sunless for one hundred and forty days.” Here is another significant passage; yet all its significance can scarcely be appreciated by the dwellers in temperate climes:-- “_November 27, Sunday._--The thermometer was in the neighbourhood of 40° _below zero_, and the day was too dark to read at noon.” “_December 15, Thursday._--We have lost the last vestige of our mid-day twilight. We cannot see print, and hardly paper: the fingers cannot be counted a foot from the eyes. Noonday and midnight are alike; and, except a vague glimmer on the sky that seems to define the hill outlines to the south, we have nothing to tell us that this Arctic world of ours has a sun.” On the 11th of January (1854), Dr. Kane’s thermometer stood at 49° below zero; and on the 20th the range of those at the observatory was at -64° to -67°. On the 5th of February they began to show an unexampled temperature. They ranged from 60° to 75° below zero, and one very admirable instrument on the taffrail of the brig stood at -65°. The reduced mean of the best spirit-standards gave -67°, or 97° below the freezing-point of water. At these temperatures chloric ether became solid, and carefully prepared chloroform exhibited a granular film or pellicle on its surface. Spirit of naphtha froze at -54°, and oil of sassafras at -49°. The oil of winter-green assumes a flocculent appearance at -56°, and solid at -63° and -65°. Some further details, borrowed from Dr. Kane’s experiences, will illustrate still more powerfully the singular atmospheric conditions of the Arctic winter. The exhalations from the surface of the body invested any exposed or partially-clad part with a wreath of vapour. The air had a perceptible pungency when inspired, but Dr. Kane did not undergo the painful sensation described by some Siberian travellers. When breathed for any length of time it imparted a sensation of dryness to the air-passages; and Dr. Kane observed that all his party, as it were involuntarily, breathed gradually, and with compressed lips.