erve the thermometer, with no other clothing than my flannel
night-dress, when, on approaching my hand to the iron latch of
the door, a distinct spark was elicited. Friction of the skin
at almost all times in winter produced the electric odor....

"Even at mid-winter we had three hours and a half of daylight.
On the 20th of December I required a candle to write at the
window at ten in the morning. On the 29th, the sun, after ten
days' absence, rose at the fishery, where the horizon was open;
and on the 8th of January, both limbs of that luminary were
seen from a gentle eminence behind the fort, rising above the
centre of Fishery Island. For several days previously, however,
its place in the heavens at noon had been denoted by rays of
light shooting into the sky above the woods. The lowest
temperature in January was 50 deg. F. On the 1st of February the
sun rose to us at nine o'clock and set at three, and the days
lengthened rapidly. On the 23d I could write in my room without
artificial light from ten A.M. to half-past two P.M., making
four hours and a half of bright daylight. The moon in the long
nights was a most beautiful object; that satellite being
constantly above the horizon for nearly a fortnight together in
the middle of the lunar month. Venus also shone with a
brilliancy which is never witnessed in a sky loaded with
vapors; and, unless in snowy weather, our nights were always
enlivened by the beams of the Aurora."

Few if any readers will ever be in a situation to use the knowledge of
how to build a snow-house. The Arctic architecture, from a chapter on
the Esquimaux, is worth reading, should it never turn out to be worth
knowing:

"As the days lengthen, the villages are emptied of their
inhabitants, who move seaward on the ice to the seal-hunt. Then
comes into use a marvellous system of architecture, unknown
among the rest of the American nations. The fine pure snow has
by that time acquired, under the action of strong winds and
hard frosts, sufficient coherence to form an admirable light
building material, with which the Eskimo master-mason erects
most comfortable dome-shaped houses. A circle is first traced
on the smooth surface of the snow; and the slabs for raising
the walls are cut from within, so as to clear a space down to
the ice,