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236 afflicted with it; but, by dropping laadanum in their eyes, in two or three days a cure was always effected.

One of our young Chipewyans had the misfortune to lose the tip of a finger from the bursting of his gun, in consequence of the ball running forward. Several guns burst in the chase from the same cause, but happily no other personal accident ensued. The increase of daylight was strikingly rapid, and by the middle of the month the twilight was perceptible at midnight. The weather, however, continued very severe; the thermometer, so late as the 20th of the month, shewing 26° below zero. The Indians left with the men at the Coppermine station were consequently unable to hunt upon the mountains, and the most active of them got badly frozen in the leg.

On the 24th, the thermometer rose at noon to the freezing point, for the first time since the 17th of October, a period of six months and a week! The mean temperature for the whole of that long and dismal interval is 14° below zero, or 46° of frost. Our people being all assembled, we gave them a dance in celebration of St. George's day, and before despatching our last packet to Mackenzie River.