April 5.--The day opened doubtfully, the sky presenting neither a stormy nor a fair aspect. There is no wind, which is a curious condition of things for this region of eternal blasts. The wind of the past few days has rolled up great drifts, which give a charm of form in rounded irregularities to the surface of the icy sea. With the sudden cessation of the wind, there has been considerable pressure which has fractured some floes and raised great lines of hummocks along the fissures and old leads. The temperature is steadily falling; to-day it ranges from -18° to -27° C. We saw little of the sun except a crimson burst at its setting, but the moon has had for us a curious attraction. It is full, and rose over the north at half-past three this afternoon. The purple twilight curve at this time was feeble but distinctly visible. The moon rose slowly behind this, and had the appearance of a great, irregular ball of crude gold, but as it rose above the purple and over the usual line of orange-red, which limits the curve, it was a full sharply-cut globe, pale yellow and fresh, as though washed in the polar whiteness. This was at five o’clock. The sun had just sunk under a line of snow flushed by a rich rose colour, and the sky above it, in the west, was fired by a mass of feathery clouds. As the moon ascended, all of this display of vivid colours faded into the blue electric glow, which is seen only over the polar pack. By this light we were able to read ordinary print at eleven o’clock at night. The heavens at this time were so bright that only the stars to the fourth magnitude were visible. April 6.--Still it blows from the east. There is now and then an intermission for a day, or a part of a day, when the wind turns to the north or the south, but strong easterly winds prevail. The other winds are hardly of sufficient force or duration to set the pack into motion. Parhelias and paraselenas are now of daily occurrence. This morning at nine o’clock, when the sun was over a bank of drift-snow on the horizon, there was first, a halo, then a rapidly-changing series of sun dogs; generally two extra suns, one to each side, and all having perpendicular lines drawn through the centres. The days are fading rapidly, and the nights are lengthening with an alarming quickness. The life, too, is less and less in evidence. We now walk miles over the desolate waste of white expanse without seeing penguins or seals, where only a few days ago we saw great numbers. There are some tracks of animals which have been stranded by the closing of fissures and open spaces of water. The direction of these is generally northward, or towards some large iceberg, where there is usually open water into which the creatures dive to seek a more congenial region northward, where the fissures are sure to be open. We took a _ski_ excursion at noon to-day, and travelled over twelve miles without seeing a speck of life.