Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and Narrative of an Attempt to Reach the North Pole, Volume 1 by Sir William Edward Parry
page 86 of 303 (28%)
page 86 of 303 (28%)
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and placed along the stovepipe; by these means, even in the severity
of winter, we could generally ensure a crop at the end of the sixth or seventh day after sowing the seed, which, by keeping several boxes at work, would give to two or three scorbutic patients nearly an ounce of salad each daily, even though the necessary economy in our coals did not allow of the fire being kept in at night. The mustard and cress thus raised were necessarily colourless, from the privation of light; but, as far as we could judge, they possessed the same pungent aromatic taste as if grown under ordinary circumstances. So effectual were these remedies in Mr. Scallon's case, that, on the ninth evening from the attack, he was able to walk about on the lower deck for some time, and he assured me that he could then "run a race." At noon on the 7th, the temperature of the atmosphere had got down to 49° below zero, being the greatest degree of cold which we had yet experienced; but the weather being quite calm, we walked on shore for an hour without inconvenience, the sensation of cold depending much more on the degree of wind at the time than on the absolute temperature of the atmosphere as indicated by the thermometer. In several of the accounts given of those countries in which an intense degree of natural cold is experienced, some effects are attributed to it which certainly did not come under our observation in the course of this winter. The first of these is the dreadful sensation said to be produced on the lungs, causing them to feel as if torn asunder when the air is inhaled at a very low temperature. No such sensation was ever experienced by us, though in going from the cabins into the open air, and _vice versâ_, we were constantly in the habit for some months of undergoing a change of from 80° to 100°, and, in several |
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