Journal of a second voyage for the discovery of a north-west passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific : performed in the years 1821-22-23, in His Majesty's ships Fury and Hecla, under the orders of Captain William Edward Parry : illustrated by numerous plates . derit necessary to turn our own men almost entirely out of it, I determined onbuilding a hospital within the Avails of our square expressly for the receptionof the natives ; and having proposed it to the officers on whom all thetrouble would necessarily devolve, a plan for the building, medical attend-ance, and victualling was immediate
Journal of a second voyage for the discovery of a north-west passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific : performed in the years 1821-22-23, in His Majesty's ships Fury and Hecla, under the orders of Captain William Edward Parry : illustrated by numerous plates . derit necessary to turn our own men almost entirely out of it, I determined onbuilding a hospital within the Avails of our square expressly for the receptionof the natives ; and having proposed it to the officers on whom all thetrouble would necessarily devolve, a plan for the building, medical attend-ance, and victualling was immediately settled, with a degree of cordialityand zeal which I can never forget. A house was accordingly constructedwith spars, turf, snow, and canvass, twelve feet square, having a passage withtwo doors, and containing five convenient bed-places for the sick, and a smallwarming-stove in the centre. All our people being employed about it, Lieu-tenant Nias completed the building in a couple of days, at no expense butthat of labour which could in no way be so well employed. The medicaland other attendance was arranged by Messrs. Edwards and Skeoch, and astock of sea-horse meat laid in by Mr. Hooper, to furnish any patients thatmight be brought down to the OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 403 We to-day placed a Sixs self-registering thermometer in the ground near l823-the observatory, four feet beneath the surface, the indices being set at + 8°. \^r+jIt would undoubtedly have been interesting to have ascertained the tempera-ture of the earth during the winter, at a much greater depth than this ; butto give an idea of the difficulty of doing this, it will only be necessary to statethat it occupied twenty-seven days to effect what we did, and that at theexpense of ten pick-axes broken by digging. After the first twenty inches,where the soil was quite loose, the ground was literally frozen as hard as arock, so that each blow of the pick-axe brought off only a few splinters ac-companied by
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookpublisherlondonj, booksubjectnaturalhistory
