Captain Nares states that one day early in March, during a long continuance of cold weather, the thermometer on the _Alert_ registered a mean or average of minus(16) 73° 7’, or upwards of 105° below the freezing point of water. On the _Discovery_ for seven consecutive days the thermometer registered a mean temperature of minus 58° 17’. On the _Alert_ for thirteen days a mean temperature of minus 58° 9’ was experienced, and for five days and nine hours a mean temperature of minus 66° 29’. During February the mercury remained frozen for fifteen consecutive days, which it could not have done had not the temperature remained at least 39° below zero. Subsequently the mercury was frozen solid for an almost identical period. One curious effect of the cold was that their breech-loading guns sometimes proved useless, for the barrels contracted so much that the cartridges could not be inserted. Nevertheless the huntsmen were often out, and were fairly successful. The _Alert’s_ game-bag for winter and early spring included six musk-oxen, twenty hares, seventy geese, twenty-six ducks, ten ptarmigan, and three foxes. That of the _Discovery_, in a lower latitude, was much larger as regards the oxen and hares. The crew of the latter also killed seven seals. And now the spring sledging season approached, and Captain Nares, anxious to communicate with the _Discovery_, seized the first favourable opportunity (March 12th, 1876) to despatch Sub-Lieutenant Egerton in charge of a sledge. He was only accompanied by Lieutenant Rawson and Christian Petersen, their interpreter. Four days afterwards the little party returned to the ship, in consequence of the severe illness of poor Petersen, who had succumbed to a terrible attack of frost-bite and cramp in the stomach. His feet were almost destroyed and utterly useless; his hands were paralysed, and his face raw. Nothing could keep him warm, though the officers, to their credit, deprived themselves of nearly all their thick clothing for his benefit. After very great persistence they could, indeed, to a certain limited extent, restore the circulation to his extremities, but it became obvious that with the existing temperatures it would be folly to proceed with such a drag and encumbrance on their enterprise. The temperature inside the tent at night was intensely cold, and they had to burrow out a snow hut for the use of the sufferer. Even inside this all the means at their command did not suffice to raise the temperature much above zero, it being 24° below zero at the time in the open air. The hut was simply a hole about six feet by four, and six feet deep, covered over with the tent-sledge, &c., and it had occupied them six hours even to accomplish this much for their patient’s comfort. Lieutenant Egerton says, in his report to Captain Nares, that Petersen, when asked if he was warm in his feet and hands, constantly responded in the affirmative, but that when examined by them they were found to be gelid and hard.