XN EXCURSION.                             1^3
gale, "bringing with it clouds of drifted snow and intense cold. They dug a cave in the snow, and by huddling together round a fire to which no vent was allowed, contrived to keep up a degree of warmth. In the morning their sledge was too deeply buritd beneath the drift to leave any hope of digging it out, and they started for the ships, now six miles distant, with snow falling so thick that they could not see a yard before them.
They were soon bewildered, and wandered they knew not where among heavy hummocks of ice; some began to sink into that insensibility which is the prelude to death by cold, and to reel about like drunken men. After resigning almost every hope of deliverance they providentially reached the ships, where their arrival caused indescribable joy, as they had been given up for lost, while no party could be sent in search of them without imminent risk of sharing their fate.
In May, Captain Lyon undertook another journey. He crossed Winter Island, and also the frozen strait separating it from the continent. He then proceeded some distance along the coast, crossing several bays upon the ice, and at last came in view of a bold cape, which he vainly hoped was the extreme western point of America. Here the party were overtaken by a storm of snow, which kept them imprisoned in their tents for sixty-eight hours, which dreary interval they enlivened by reading in turn from three books they chanced to have with them; as soon as the sun began to shine they hastened back to the ships.
The end of May presented a gloomy aspect, the season being more backward than it had been in the higher latitude of Melville Island.    The snow was