“Travelling by night and sleeping by day,” writes Captain Parry “so completely inverted the natural order of things that it was difficult to persuade ourselves of the reality. Even the officers and myself, who were all furnished with pocket chronometers, could not always bear in mind at which part of the twenty-four hours we had arrived; and there were several of the men who declared, and I believe truly, that they never knew night from day during the whole excursion. When we rose in the evening, we commenced our day by prayers; after which we took off our fur sleeping dresses and put on clothes for travelling, the former being made of camlet lined with raccoon skin, and the latter of strong blue cloth. We made a point always of putting on the same stockings and boots for travelling in, whether they had been dried during the day or not, and I believe it was only in five or six instances at the most that they were not either still wet or hard frozen. This indeed was of no consequence, beyond the discomfort of first putting them on in this state, as they were sure to be thoroughly wet in a quarter of an hour after commencing our journey; while, on the other hand, it was of vital importance to keep dry things for sleeping in. Being ‘rigged’ for travelling, we breakfasted upon warm cocoa and biscuit, and after stowing the things in boats, and on the sledges, so as to secure them as much as possible from the wet, we set off on our day’s journey and usually travelled four, five, or seven hours, according to circumstances.” They made very slow progress in spite of their strenuous exertions, owing to the floes being small, exceedingly rough, and intersected by lanes of water which could not be crossed without unloading the boats. Rain added to their discomfort, causing the ice to form into numberless irregular needle-like crystals, which proved very trying to the feet. Elevated hummocks presented themselves, over which it was almost impossible to draw the boats. Even by the utmost efforts they could not make an advance of more than a mile and a half or two miles in five or six hours. Realizing the unfavourable conditions for reaching the pole, owing to the advanced season of the year, Parry soon relinquished that hope and bent his energies to reaching at best the 83° parallel, if possible. But now to his utter discouragement it was found that the drifting of the snow fields was gradually carrying them backward, and that, in spite of every attempt to advance, they were daily losing ground.