A Diary and Journal from the Second Grinnell Expedition

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ridden man, but convalescent, I hope, here raises himself on his elbow, and checks Brooks for being "down in the mouth." and Brooks after a growling rejoinder improves his merry remniscences by turning to me.

"Capn Kane five nights to come one year you came in upon four of us down as flat as flounders. I didn't look at your boots but I knew you wore Esquimaux ones. It was a hard walk for you the greatest thing I ever hearn tell of but:- here he begins to soliloquise - Baker's dead and Pierres dead, and Wilson and I. "[Damn it] Shut up Brooks shut up" - here I broke in whispering across the boards which separated our matrresses "You will make the patients uncomfortable." But no: the old times were strong upon him, he did not speak loud but he caught me by both hands and said in his low base quiet tones, "Doctor you cried when you saw us, and didn't pull up till we jabbed the stopper down the whiskey tin and gave you a tot of it."

The general tone of the conversation around me is like this specimen (above). I am glad to hear my shipmates talking together again for we have of late been silent. The last years battle commenced at this time one year ago and it is natural that the men should recal it. Had I succeeded in pushing my party across the Bay my success would have been uequalled (as to daring and efficiency) it was the true plan, the best conceived and in fact the only one [alternative] by which

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Refraction with all its magic is back upon us; the Delectable mountains appear again; and as the sun has now worked his way to the margin of the N western horizon, we can see the blaze streaming streaming out from the black portals of these uplifted hills as if there was truly beyond it a celestial gate. I don't know what preposterous working of brain led me to compare this N. Western ridge to Bunyan's Delectable Mountains, but there was a time only one year ago when I used to gaze upon them with an eye of real longing. Very often when they rose phantom like [they rose] into the sky, I would plan schemes by which to reach them, work over mentally my hard pilgrimage accross the ice and my escape from Doubting Castle to this scene of triumph and reward. Once upon your coasts Oh inaccessible mountains I would reach the Northern ocean and gather together the remnants of poor Franklin's Company. These would be to me the orchards and vineyards and running fountains. The "Lord of the Hill" would see in me a Pilgrim, "Leaning upon our staves, as is common with weary pilgrims when they stand to talk with any by the way." We would look down upon an open Polar Sea refulgent with Northern Sunshine.

I did try to gain these mountains and there is something curious in [thy?] (a closer) likeness which our efforts bore to another scene. When I think of our sufferings, of poor Baker's & Pierre's deaths, of my own almost fatalistic anxiety to cross the frozen sea, and of the terrible phisical trial by which I saved our advance