The weather was now, at times, extremely sultry, bringing out swarms of moschetoes, that soon became very troublesome, even on board the ships.  A thermometer suspended in the middle of the observatory, and exposed to the sun’s rays, was observed by Mr. Fisher to stand at 92 deg. at five P.M. on the 18th.

On the 19th Captain Lyon returned from Quilliam Creek, bringing with him the whole of our party stationed there, the ice being now so broken up in that neighbourhood as to render the fishing dangerous without proper boats.  On this journey, which it took two days to perform, eleven dogs drew a weight of two thousand and fifty pounds, of which six hundred and forty were salmon, and ninety-five venison, procured by our people.  The fish had all been caught in the trawl; and treble the quantity might easily have been taken with a seine, had we known how wide the mouth of the stream was to become.  They varied in length from twenty to twenty six inches, and one of the largest, when cleaned, weighed eight pounds and a half; but their average weight in this state did not exceed two pounds and a quarter.  The distance of the fishing-place from the ships, the dangerous state of the ice, and the soreness of the dogs’ feet from travelling on the rough, honey-combed ice, prevented our taking any farther advantage of this very acceptable change of diet.

Nothing worthy of notice occurred till the 29th, when a patch of ice, a mile broad, separated from the outer margin of our barrier and drifted away.  The canal formed by laying sand on the ice was now quite through in most places, showing that the plan would, in this latitude at least, always ensure a ship’s escape at an earlier season than by the regular course of nature, provided it could be carried the whole way down to the open water.

I am now under the disagreeable necessity of entering on a subject which I had at one time ventured to hope need scarcely occupy any part of this narrative:  I mean that of the scurvy, some slight but unequivocal symptoms of which disease were this day reported to me, by Mr. Edwards, to have appeared among four or five of the Fury’s men, rendering it necessary, for the first time during the voyage, to have recourse to antiscorbutic treatment among the seamen and marines.

It will, perhaps, be considered a curious and singular fact in the history of sea-scurvy, that during the whole of the preceding part of this voyage, none among us but officers were in the slightest degree affected by it, a circumstance directly contrary to former experience.  To whatever causes this might be attributed, it could not, however, but be highly gratifying to be thus assured that the various means employed to preserve the health of the seamen and marines had proved even beyond expectation efficacious.