imprudently gone away without mittens, and with a musket in his
hand. A party of our people most providentially found him,
although the night was very dark, just as he had fallen down a
steep bank of snow, and was beginning to feel that degree of
torpor and drowsiness which, if indulged, inevitably proves fatal.
When he was brought on board his fingers were quite stiff, and
bent into the shape of that part of the musket which he had been
carrying; and the frost had so far destroyed the animation in his
fingers on one hand, that it was necessary to amputate three of
them a short time after, notwithstanding all the care and
attention paid to him by the medical gentlemen. The effect which
exposure to severe frost has in benumbing the mental as well as
the corporeal faculties, was very striking in this man, as well as
in two of the young gentlemen who returned after dark, and of whom
we were anxious to make inquiries respecting Pearson. When I sent
for them into my cabin, they looked wild, spoke thick and
indistinctly, and it was impossible to draw from them a rational
answer to any of our questions. After being on board for a short
time, the mental faculties appeared gradually to return with the
returning circulation, and it was not till then that a looker-on
could easily persuade himself that they had not been drinking too
freely. In order to guard in some measure against the danger of
persons losing their way, which was more and more to be
apprehended as the days became shorter and the ground more covered
with snow, which gives such a dreary sameness to the country, we
erected on all the hills within two or three miles of the harbour,
finger-posts pointing towards the ships.

I have before remarked that all the water which we made use of
while within the polar circle was procured from snow either