"The rapid evaporation of both snow and ice in the winter and spring, long before the action of the sun has produced the slightest thaw or appearance of moisture, is made evident to residents in the high latitudes by many facts of daily occurrence; and I may mention that the drying of linen furnishes a familiar one. When a shirt, after being washed, is exposed in the open air to a temperature of 40 deg. or 50 deg. below zero, it is instantly rigidly frozen, and may be broken if violently bent. If agitated when in this condition by a strong wind, it makes a rustling noise like theatrical thunder. In an hour or two, however, or nearly as quickly as it would do if exposed to the sun in the moist climate of England, it dries and becomes limber.... "In consequence of the extreme dryness of the atmosphere in winter, most articles of English manufacture made of wood, horn, or ivory, brought to Rupert's Land, are shrivelled, bent, and broken. The handles of razors and knives, combs, ivory scales, and various other things kept in the warm rooms, are damaged in this way. The human body also becomes visibly electric from the dryness of the skin. One cold night I rose from my bed, and having lighted a lantern, was going out to observe the thermometer, with no other clothing than my flannel night-dress, when, on approaching my hand to the iron latch of the door, a distinct spark was elicited. Friction of the skin at almost all times in winter produced the electric odor.... "Even at mid-winter we had three hours and a half of daylight. On the 20th of December I required a candle to write at the window at ten in the morning. On the 29th, the sun, after ten days' absence, rose at the fishery, where the horizon was open; and on the 8th of January, both limbs of that luminary were seen from a gentle eminence behind the fort, rising above the centre of Fishery Island. For several days previously, however, its place in the heavens at noon had been denoted by rays of light shooting into the sky above the woods. The lowest temperature in January was 50 deg. F. On the 1st of February the sun rose to us at nine o'clock and set at three, and the days lengthened rapidly. On the 23d I could write in my room without artificial light from ten A.M. to half-past two P.M., making four hours and a half of bright daylight. The moon in the long nights was a most beautiful object; that satellite being constantly above the horizon for nearly a fortnight together in the middle of the lunar month. Venus also shone with a brilliancy which is never witnessed in a sky loaded with vapors; and, unless in snowy weather, our nights were always enlivened by the beams of the Aurora."