lofty cliffs, the light glowed and grew dim and glowed again, as if the air was filled with charnel meteors, pulsating with wild inconstancy over some vast illimitable city of the dead. The scene was noiseless, yet the senses were deceived, for unearthly sounds seemed to follow the rapid flashes, and to fall upon the ear like ----"the tread Of phantoms dread, With banner, and spear, and flame." January 13th. The month of January runs on through stormy skies. The wind continues to blow as before, and the wild rush of gales fills the night with sounds of terror. [Sidenote: DEPTH OF SNOW.] The air has been, however, for the most part, quite clear. But little snow has fallen since November. The total depth now mounts up to 53¾ inches. I am more and more struck with the difference in the atmospheric conditions of this place and Van Rensselaer Harbor. There we had rarely moisture, and gales were scarcely known. The temperatures were very low, and the winter was marked by a general calm. Here the temperatures are more mild than Parry's at Melville Island, the atmospheric disturbances have been very great, and the amount of snow has been truly surprising. There is one comfort at least in the winds. They either carry off the snow or pack it very hard, so that we get about with as little difficulty as if we were walking upon the bare ice. It is pounded as hard as the drives in the Central Park. All these unusual phenomena are, as has been hitherto observed, doubtless due to the close proximity of the open sea. How extensive this water may be is of course unknown, but its limits cannot be very small to produce such serious atmospheric disturbance. It seems, indeed, as if we were in the very vortex of the north winds. The poet has told us that the north winds "Are cradled far down in the depths that yawn Beneath the Polar Star;" and it appears very much as if we had got into those yawning depths, and had come not only to the place where the winds are cradled, but where they are born. [Sidenote: EVAPORATION AT LOW TEMPERATURES.]