mean for the month wasi||290.7. During these intense colds, however,
the atmosphere was generally calm, and the wood-cutters and
others went about their ordinary occupations without using any extraordinary
precautions, yet without feeling any bad effects. They
had their rein-deer shirts on, leather mittens lined with blankets, and
furred caps; but none of them used any defence for the face, or
needed any. Indeed we have already mentioned that the heat is
abstracted most rapidly from the body during strong breezes, and
most of those who have perished from cold in this country, have fallen
a sacrifice to their being overtaken on a lake or other unsheltered
place, by a storm of wind. The intense colds, were, however, detrimental
to us in another way. The trees froze to their very centres
and became as hard as stones, and more difficult to cut. Some of the
axes were broken daily, and by the end of the month we had only
one left that was fit for felling trees. By entrusting it only to one of
the party who had been bred a carpenter, and who could use it with
dexterity, it was fortunately preserved until the arrival of our men
with others from Fort Providence.
A thermometer, hung in our bed-room at the distance of sixteen-
feet from the fire, but exposed to its direct radiation, stood even in
the day-time occasionally at 15° below zero, and was observed more
than once previous to the kindling of the fire in the morning, to be
as low as 40° below zero. On two of these occasions the chronometers
2149 and 2151, which during the night lay under Mr. Hood’s
and Dr. Richardson’s pillows, stopped while they were dressing themselves.
The rapid at the commencement of the river remained open in
the severest weather, although it was somewhat contracted in width.
Its temperature was 32°. as was the surface of the river opposite the
house, about a quarter of a mile lower down, tried at a hole in the
ice, through which water was drawn for domestic purposes. The
river here was two fathoms and a half deep, and the temperature at