p. 80, in a description of the cabin: As for reading, it is next to impossible, for I defy any body to read long sitting on a locker nine inches broad; also, the bunks are too dark, and if we try to read in them we generally go to sleep.
p. 171: Rather dull work. We have read all our books; we can not see forty yards from the deck; and the smell from the hold is getting almost intolerable. It changes silver to the color of copper, and copper to that of iron, and actually turns white paint black.
p. 179-80: Scoresby, who seems to have been one of the most accurate and painstaking observers, and a thoroughly practical as well as scientific seaman, who had spent his life in the Polar seas, admits never having been farther north than 81° 30′; and I believe with him that this is about the closest authenticated approximation which ever has been made, or which ever will be made, toward the pole by water.
From much reading on the subject, and much conversation with intelligent practical men, well acquainted with those seas, as well as from my own little opportunities of observation during my two visits to Spitzbergen, I may be permitted to express my thorough conviction that all idea of a great open sea around the pole is entirely chimerical, and that nothing exists within a radius of six hundred miles of the pole but vast masses of eternal and impenetrable ice, unless, indeed, there may happen to be land intervening.
p. 265, on return to Hammerfast at end of trip: We found a great accumulation of letters and newspapers, and read nearly all night.