Page 248

247

Tuesday
Jany 9

I don't know what is the matter
with me I can no longer give by the
pen a picture of the foreground, so
hard worked and care beset am
I that I cease to be impressed by the
present in thinking of the future.
Those little every day touches which
make the sketch pass by me. The same
to a greater or lesser extent pervades our
company. Ohlsen has lost his memory
"Cant keep his tools" Petersen cannot catch
the words of our Smith's Sound dialect.
Wilson Brooks and Morton complain
of enfeebled eyesight, and a scant vocabulary.

Yesterday in recording the execessive
cold I gave no idea of the impression
which it ought to make on us, or
would make upon others. In spite of
the choking darkness you absolutely
see the cold Nature wears – shrouded
as she is – a different aspect – and the
sounds of contracting solids, ice and wood
work, and hummock ridge and terraced
shore, fill the ear with rustling, cracking
ticking, and groaning. The great ice
foot sends out explosive wreaths of condensed
vapour. Evaporated by the sudden
rupture of some large ice admitting a
momentary contact of air and water.
These resemble [peals?] of musketry.

Yet I walk in this disguised region
with almost as little inconvenience as
I would once have encountered at
-30°. The sole appreciable distinction
which I am able to discover
between continued exposure to
-30° and -63° (the mean of our
lowest recorded minima) is that the air
passages become, in the latter, oppressively

247

Tuesday
Jany 9

I don't know what is the matter
with me I can no longer give by the
pen a picture of the foreground, so
hard worked and care beset am
I that I cease to be impressed by the
present in thinking of the future.
Those little every day touches which
make the sketch pass by me. The same
to a greater or lesser extent pervades our
company. Ohlsen has lost his memory
"Cant keep his tools" Petersen cannot catch
the words of our Smith's Sound dialect.
Wilson Brooks and Morton complain
of enfeebled eyesight, and a scant vocabulary.

Yesterday in recording the execessive
cold I gave no idea of the impression
which it ought to make on us, or
would make upon others. In spite of
the choking darkness you absolutely
see the cold Nature wears – shrouded
as she is – a different aspect – and the
sounds of contracting solids, ice and wood
work, and hummock ridge and terraced
shore, fill the ear with rustling, cracking
ticking, and groaning. The great ice
foot sends out explosive wreaths of condensed
vapour. Evaporated by the sudden
rupture of some large ice admitting a
momentary contact of air and water.
These resemble [peals?] of musketry.

Yet I walk in this disguised region
with almost as little inconvenience as
I would once have encountered at
-30°. The sole appreciable distinction
which I am able to discover
between continued exposure to
-30° and -63° (the mean of our
lowest recorded minima) is that the air
passages become, in the latter, oppressively