often been mentioned, was one of these bare spots.  It was so placed as to be swept by both the east and the west winds, which generally cleared it of everything like snow, as fast as it fell; and this more effectually than could be done by a thousand brooms.  The level of rock usually travelled in going to or from the wreck, was another of these clear places.  It was a sort of shelf, too narrow to admit of the snow’s banking, and too much raked by the winds that commonly accompanied snow, to suffer the last to lodge to any great depth.  Snow there was, with a hard crust, as has already been mentioned; but it was not snow ten or fifteen feet deep, as occurred in many other places.  There were several points, however, where banks had formed, even on this ledge, through which the men were compelled to cut their way by the use of shovels:  an occupation that gave them exercise, and contributed to keep them in health, if it was of no other service.  It was found that the human frame could not endure one-half the toil, in that low state of the mercury, that it could bear in one a few degrees higher.

Daggett had not, by any means, abandoned his craft, as much as he had permitted her to be dismantled.  Every day or two he had some new expedient for getting the schooner off in the spring; though all who heard them were perfectly convinced of their impracticableness.  This feeling induced him to cause his own men to keep open the communication; and scarce a day passed in which he did not visit the poor unfortunate craft.  Nor was the place without an interest of a very peculiar sort.  It has been said that the fragments of ice, some of which were more than a hundred feet in diameter, and all of which were eight or ten feet in thickness, had been left on their edges, inclining in a way to form caverns that extended a great distance.  Now, it so happened, that just around the wreck the cakes were so distributed as to intercept the first snows which filled the outer passages, got to be hardened, and covered anew by fresh storms, thus interposed an effectual barrier to the admission of any more of the frozen element within the ice.  The effect was to form a vast range of natural galleries amid the cakes, that were quite clear of any snow but that which had adhered to their surfaces, and which offered little or no impediment to motion—­nay, which rather aided it, by rendering the walking less slippery.  As the deck of the schooner had been cleared, leaving an easy access to all its entrances, cabin, hold, and forecastle, this put the Vineyard Lion under cover, while it admitted of all her accommodations being used.  A portion of her wood had been left in her, it will be remembered, as well as her camboose.  The last was got into the cabin, and Daggett, attended by two or three of his hands, would pass a good deal of his time there.  One reason given for this distribution of the forces, was the greater room it allowed those who remained at the hut for motion.