Page:History of the Royal Astronomical Society (1923).djvu/47

 [820-30] ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY 31 rising at a very rapid rate, and as we knew that if we once lost sight of her, we should never see her more,. . . jumping into the boat, up to our middle in water, we continued to work near three hours . . . the thermometer was at 17 below zero, and so intense was the cold that .-. . the moment we raised our legs above the water (in walking) our stockings froze to them as tight as if bound with a garter ! In such a situation ... it is a wonder we had not perished ; and possibly we might had not the river. . . completely covered our boat and obliged us to desist. Thus went our boat ! and thus went every hope of proceeding on our journey ! Thus were all our flattering prospects cut short, and none left but the miserable one of fixing our winter habitation on these inhospitable shores. When day appeared they found that their troubles were by no means over. They had landed the gear on level ground, but above this the bank was " fifty feet high and nearly perpendicular," and the water rising rapidly. They carried the things up one by one, a few feet at a time, and lodged them behind some tree to pre- vent their rolling back into the river. When it had ceased rising they set about fixing up some kind of habitation out of poles and blankets, and kept a fire burning. " Some of the packages were so much frozen as to take three days standing constantly before the fire ere we could get out their contents to dry them." Pre- sently they found a rough log hut which gave better shelter ; and they got a boat built for proceeding on their journey when the river (which froze up again, having been broken up merely by heavy rains) should allow, which was on February 20. The entry in the journal on Christmas Day is somewhat in the manner of a Robinson Crusoe soliloquy. Here am I in the wilds of America, away from the society of men, amidst the haunts of wild beasts and savages, just escaped from the perils of a wreck, in want not only of the comforts, but of the necessaries of life, housed in a hovel that in my own country would not be good enough for a pigsty ; at a time, too, when my father, my mother, my sisters, my friends and acquaintances, in fact, the whole nation, were feasting upon the best the country could afford. Yet he comforts himself with the reflection that he was at least better off than those who had perished in the flood, or even than his companions who were at that moment ill with their experiences, though this meant that he was the only one able to work. And of course he survived these and other hardships as we know, and lived to nurture our young Society. It appears that " one of the objects of his tour was the forma- tion or extension of commercial connection, probably of some