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up the river, and every article, except the snow shoes, taken away by the officers of the customs. And though there was not one thing which was not an article of dress; and though a petition was preferred to the commissioners, in favour of Mr. Dymond and myself, yet, for some reason or other, they could not be restored.

But, to return to Hudson's Bay. November the 6th, the river, which is very rapid, and about a mile over at its mouth, was frozen fast over from side to side, so that the people walked across it to their tents: also the same morning, a half pint glass of British brandy was frozen solid in the observatory. Not a bird of any kind was now to be seen at the factory, except now and then a solitary crow, or a very small bird about the size of a wren; but our hunters brought us home every week plenty of partridges and rabbits, and some hares; all of which are white in the winter season; and the legs and claws of the partridges are covered with feathers, in the same manner as the other parts of their bodies. They now killed two or three hogs which Captain Richards had been so kind to leave with the governor, which before they were well opened, and cut into joints, were frozen like a piece of ice, so that they had nothing to do but hang them up in a place where they would remain in that state, and use them when they thought proper. They used some of these in the month of May, which were as sweet as they were the moment they were killed, and much more tender and delicate. One thing however must be observed, that if you roast them on a spit, or cut them in any manner while roasting, all the gravy will run out immediately.

In the fore part of December, Mr. W. went to one of the hunter's tents, where he stayed near a week. When he was there, he was told by one of the people, that they had a spring very near them, which was not yet frozen over, though the sea was frozen up as far as could be seen, and the ice in the river was 4 or 5 feet thick. He went to see it; but that morning the frost had been so very intense; that it was frozen over about an inch thick; when they broke the ice, the water was so shallow, that they raised all the mud from the bottom; and yet other springs, that were at least 6 times its depth, had been frozen quite dry several weeks.

In January 1769, the cold began to be extremely intense: even in their little cabbin, which was scarcely 3 yards square, and in which they constantly kept a very large fire; it had such an effect, that the little alarm clock would not go without an additional weight, and often not with that. The head of Mr. W.'s bed-place, for want of knowing better, went against one of the outside walls of the house; and though they were of stone, near 3 feet thick, and lined with inch boards, supported at least, 3 inches from the walls, the bedding was frozen to the boards every morning; and before the end of February, these boards were

covered with ice almost half as thick as themselves. Towards the latter end of January, when the cold was so very intense, he carried a half-pint of brandy, perfectly fluid, into the open air, and in less than 2 minutes it was as thick as treacle; in about 5, it had a very strong ice on the top; and he believes that in an hour's time it would have been nearly solid. About the beginning of December they began to use spirits of wine for the plumb-line of the quadrant, which would have been evaporated to about half the quantity in a fortnight's time, the spirituous part shooting up the plumb line and sides of the glass, like coral; but perfectly white. What remained would then freeze, but not before. At the beginning of the winter Mr. W. hung a small vial with about a teaspoonful of proof spirits of wine by the thermometer, on the outside of the observatory, and when he had well corked it up, dropped some water on the cork, which was instantly frozen to ice, and thus sealed the vial, in a manner hermetically. This, though it hung all the winter, never froze; nor, that he could perceive, altered its fluidity in the least.

It was now almost impossible to sleep an hour together, more especially on very cold nights, without being awakened by the cracking of the beams in the house, which were rent by the prodigious expansive power of the frost. It was very easy to mistake them for the guns on the top of the house, which are 3 pounders. But those are nothing to what we frequently hear from the rocks up the country, and along the coast; these often bursting with a report equal to that of many heavy artillery fired together, and the splinters are thrown to an amazing distance.

March 19th, it thawed in the sun, for the first time, and on the 26th it thawed in reality. The yard of the factory was that day almost covered with water. After this, it continued to thaw every day about noon when the sun was out; and by the 23d of April, the ground was in many places bare. On the 26th it rained very fast, almost the whole night, which was the first rain we had after October the 3d, 1768. It was really surprizing next morning to see what an alteration it had made in the appearance of the country. We had now alternately snow and rain, frosts and thaws, as in England; the grass began to spring up very fast in the bare places, and the gooseberry bushes to put out buds; in short, they began to have some appearance of spring.

The latter end of April, the hunters began to come home from the partridge tents, in order to prepare for the spring goose season, which is always expected to begin about that time; and is, in truth, the harvest to this part of the world. They not only kill, so as to keep the whole factory in fresh geese for near a month, but to salt as many as afterwards make no inconsiderable part of the year's provision. There are various sorts of the geese, as the grey-goose, the way-way, the brant, the dunter, and several more. The gander of the dunter

kind is one of the most beautiful feathered birds ever seen, its colours being more bright and vivid than those of the parrot, and far more various.

Toward the latter end of May, the country began to be really agreeable; the weather being neither too hot, nor so cold, but that one might walk any where without being troubled with any disagreeable sensation: and the dandelion, having grown pretty luxuriant, made most excellent sallad to our roast geese. On June 16th, the ice of the river broke up, and went to sea; we now set our nets, and caught great plenty of fine salmon; Mr. W. has known upwards of 90 caught in one tide. They had besides, fishermen up the river, who brought down plenty of pyke, mathoy, and tittymeg; these last two being fish peculiar to this country, and both very good. But, in enumerating the fish, he must not omit the kepling, which comes about the middle of July. This fish is nearly of the size of a smelt, and has exactly the same smell; but its back is much darker, and it is not quite so thick as a smelt in proportion to its length, more especially toward the head: according to his opinion, it exceeds in point of delicacy every other fish whatever, and is in such plenty, that they are thrown up, and left on the shore by the surf of the sea; but then it must be owned that this rarity can never be had above a fortnight in a year, and sometimes not so long. This fish is well known on the banks of Newfoundland. About the beginning of July they also got plenty of very fine radishes; and the tops of the turnips began to grow large enough to boil for greens to their beef and salt geese. Also, towards the middle, they had very fine lettuce, so that if the muschettos had not paid them a visit about the beginning of the month likewise, the last 2 or 3 months would have been extremely agreeable; but taking altogether, he thinks that the winter is the more agreeable part of the year.

Mr. W. then adds such remarks as he had been able to make, relative to the natural history of the country; its inhabitants, soil, air, produce, &c. And first with respect to the inhabitants: they are of a middle size, but rather tall than otherwise; very spare and thin; he never saw one, either man or woman, inclined to be fleshy; they are of a copper colour, with wide mouths, thick lips, and long, straight, black hair; of which they are immoderately fond, and would not have it cut, except on the death of a friend, for any thing that you can give them; their eyes are black, and the most beautiful ever seen. The rest of their features vary as those of Europeans do. Their disposition seems to be of the melancholic kind; good-natured, friendly, and hospitable to each other, and to the Europeans; and he believes the most honest creatures that are any where to be met with. They do not readily forget an injury; but will never revenge it when they are sober. They have no laws to regulate their conduct, except that of reason; which, in their sober moments, they are seldom known to transgress. They converse extremely well on subjects which they understand, and are re

markably cleaver in repartees; but seem to have very little genius for arts or science. They lead an erratic life, living in tents, as all people must do whose subsistence depends entirely on hunting.

They are not without some notion of religion, but it is a very limited one. They acknowledge two Beings; one the author of all good, the other of all evil. The former they call Ukkemah, which appellation they give also to their chiefs; and the latter they call Wittikah. They pay some sort of adoration to both, though it is difficult to say what. Their opinion of the origin of mankind is, that Ukkemah made the first men and women out of the earth, 3 in number of each; that those, whom we Europeans sprang from, were made from a whiter earth than what their progenitors were, and that there was one pair of still blacker earth than they. They have likewise an imperfect traditional account of the deluge; only they substitute a beaver for the dove.

With respect to the soil and its produce of the vegetable kind, Mr. W. can add very little to what was said on his first coming on shore. As to corn, he is well convinced, that about Churchill it will produce none, except oats: those, from a trial which he had seen, he believes might be brought to some tolerable degree of perfection in time, and with proper culture. Its internal contents are, he believes, chiefly rocks; they are, however, many of them marble, and some very fine. He had also specimens of copper, copper ore, mundic, spars, talc, (different from the Muscovite) and several pyrites.

The air in this country is very seldom, if ever, clear for 24 hours together; but they were not so much troubled with fogs as he expected from the accounts he had read of the country, and from what was experienced in the voyage out.

There is a haze continually found near the horizon here. This he apprehends is the cause why the sun's rising is always preceded by two long streams of red light, one on each side of him, and about 20° distant from him. These rise as the sun rises; and as they grow longer, begin to be inflected towards each other, till they meet directly over the sun, just as he rises, forming there a kind of parhelion, or mock-sun. These two streams of light seem to have their source in two other parhelia, which rise with the true sun; and in the winter season, when the sun never rises out of the above-mentioned haze, all three accompany him the whole day, and set with him in the same manner that they rose. Mr. W. had once or twice seen a 4th parhelion directly under the true sun; but this is not common.

The aurora-borealis, which has been represented as very extraordinary in those parts, bears, in his opinion, no comparison to what he had seen in the north parts of England. It is always of the same form here, and consists of a narrow, steady stream of a pale straw-coloured light, which rises out of the horizon,

about E.S.E., and extends itself through the zenith, and vanishes near the horizon, about the w. N. w. It has very seldom, any motion at all; and when it has, it is only a small tremulous one on the two borders. On the 7th of August they took their departure from the Factory, and sailed on their return homewards. The latitude of the factory Mr. W. makes 58° 55'.

The prodigious difference between the latitude of Churchill factory, as laid down from observations made by Hadley's quadrant, and that deduced from the observations made with the astronomical quadrant on shore, has often employed Mr. W.'s. most serious attention; but he cannot think on any probable cause for such difference, unless it lie in the very great refractive power of the air in these parts. He has mentioned how the ice and land appear to be lifted up, when persons stand on the ship's deck: and if the visible horizon be lifted up in like manner, it must make its apparent distance from the sun, or, which is the same thing, the sun's apparent altitude, less than it otherwise would be; and consequently, the latitude greater than the truth; and also greater than it will be shown by a land quadrant, which depends not on the horizon, agreeable to what is found in the case before us.*

Before quitting this part of the world, Mr. W. observed that he had abundant reason, in his voyage home through Hudson's Straits, and the adjacent seas, to rest satisfied with having ventured his opinion in respect to the quick motion, or swift dissolution, of the ice islands. For after they left the Straits they had not seen one; and though they were becalmed, and much troubled with contrary winds, so that they lay beating from side to side about 9 days in the Straits, yet they did not see 20 islands the whole time, and these none of them very large. Whereas, was Capt. Middleton's hypothesis true, and they were some hundreds of years dissolving, and travelling into the latitude of 50°, they could not have got by this time quite out of Hudson's Straits, much less out of the Straits of Davis.

Oct. 11, at noon, the Lizard light-houses bore N. E. by N. dist. by estimation

* Having mentioned this circumstance to the Rev. Mr. Maskelyne, it immediately occurred to him, that the longitude deduced from observations of the D's distance from the sun or a star, would be considerably affected by this cause, as not only the altitudes of the O, from whence the time at the ship is found; but also the latitude of the ship, found by an observation of the sun's meridional altitude, or otherwise, will conspire to increase the sun's distance from the meridian, or angle at the pole. Mr. W. therefore recomputed the longitude from his observation of the moon's distance from the sun, taken August 5th, 1768, on a supposition that the mean error in any altitude taken by Hadley's quadrant, arising from this cause, is 10 minutes; and found that on such a supposition, which it must be allowed appears to be extremely well founded, the longitude will be 11'4 less than what he found it at the time when he made the observation, and therefore the longitude of Churchill will in this case be only 94° 50′ w. And by making a similar correction of 15′ to Mr. Dymond's observation of the 6th, it will give the longitude of Churchill 95° 18' w.-Orig.