Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/488

 472 night, wlien the sun was low. By this arrangement they had the advantage also of sleeping during the comparative warmth of the day. The daily allowance of provisions per man was 1 lb. of biscuit, ⅔ lb. of preserved meat, 1 oz. of sugar, and ½ pint of spirits. The total weight carried on the cart was 800 lbs., consisting of two blanket-tents, wood lor fuel, three weeks' provisions, cooking-apparatus, three guns, and ammunition. In addition to this, each man had to carry a blanket-bag, a haversack with one pair of shoes, one pair of stockings, and a flannel shirt, weighing from 18 to 24 lbs. Their tents were made of blankets, with two boarding-pikes fixed across at each end, and a ridge-rope along the top, the lower parts of the blankets being kept down by placing stones on them.

In his attempt to reach the pole, in 1827, Parry started in the same month of June, with four officers and twenty-four men, with seventy-one days' provisions, in two flat-bottomed boats named the Enterprise and Endeavor, so constructed that they could be used as sledges, and drawn on the ice. They were 20 feet long, and 7 feet broad, with a bamboo mast 19 feet long, a tanned duck-sail, steer-oar, fourteen paddles, a sprit and boat-hook. Each boat, with stores, etc., complete, weighed 3,753 lbs., making the weight for each man to drag 268 lbs.! in addition to four light sledges, weighing 26 lbs. each. The boats were squarely built, without regard to shape or symmetry, their beam carried well forward and aft. In order to secure elasticity during the rough handling which they must needs encounter from frequent concussions with the ice, their frame was first covered with a water-proof coating, consisting of tarred canvas, then a thin fir planking, which latter was covered with felt, and outside a thin oak planking, the whole secured to the timbers of the boat by iron screws. On either side of the keel was a stout wooden runner, shod with metal, similar to that of a sledge, on which the boat would travel when being dragged over the ice. A spar, made of hide, was secured across the fore-end of the runners, to which the drag-ropes were attached. The daily allowance of provisions for each man was 10 ozs. of biscuit, 9 ozs. of pemmican, 1 oz. of cocoa-powder, and 1 gill of rum, besides 3 ozs. of tobacco per man per week. The fuel used was spirits of wine, of which 2 pints were used daily.

This was one of the most laborious and heart-breaking journeys that can be conceived, as, owing to the lateness of the season, the traveling was chiefly over loose pack, which on account of unusual heavy rain was broken and rotten; added to this, the hummocky nature of the firmer ice necessitated a constant packing and unpacking of their sledges, the same ground having to be traversed as many as three and sometimes four times. Parry nobly persevered, fighting against obstacles that would have daunted and appalled many a brave man, until it was known that the drift of the ice on which they were traveling was faster to the southward than the progress they were