Mr. Sonntag, with Radcliffe, Knorr, and Starr to assist him, took general charge of such scientific work as we found ourselves able to manage; and Jensen, with Hans and Peter, were detailed as an organized hunting force. Mr. Dodge, with the body of the crew, discharged the cargo, and, carrying it to the shore, swung it with a derrick up on the lower terrace, which was thirty feet above the tide, and there deposited it in a store-house made of stones and roofed with our old sails. This was a very laborious operation. The beach was shallow, the bank sloping, and the ice not being strong enough to bear a sledge, a channel had to be kept open for the boats between the ship and the shore. The duty of preparing the schooner for our winter home devolved upon Mr. McCormick, with the carpenter and such other assistance as he required. After the sails had been unbent, the yards sent down, and the topmasts housed, the upper deck was roofed in,--making a house eight feet high at the ridge and six and a half at the side. A coating of tarred paper closed the cracks, and four windows let in the light while it lasted, and ventilated our quarters. Between decks there was much to do. The hold, after being floored, scrubbed, and whitewashed, was converted into a room for the crew; the cook-stove was brought down from the galley and placed in the centre of it under the main hatch, in which hung our simple apparatus for melting water from the snow or ice. This was a funnel-shaped double cylinder of galvanized iron connecting with the stove-pipe, and was called the "snow melter." A constant stream poured from it into a large cask, and we had always a supply of the purest water, fully ample for every purpose. Into these quarters the crew moved on the first of October, and the out-door work of preparation being mainly completed, we entered then, with the ceremony of a holiday dinner, upon our winter life. And the dinner was by no means to be despised. Our soup was followed by an Upernavik salmon, and the table groaned under a mammoth haunch of venison, which was flanked by a ragout of rabbit and a venison pasty. [Sidenote: OUR COMMISSARIAT.]