Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/182

Rh the Isabella's, took no especial notice. In Regent's Inlet, he said, there were hundreds of whales between Cape York and Cape Kater. He had caught five off Cape Kater, and twenty-three more between there and Cape York. Seals, narwhals, white whales, and the walrus, were also in great abundance. He likewise described to me, in a most graphic manner, the terrible storm of 1830 in Baffin's Bay, when twenty-two vessels were wrecked, and yet his own ship escaped without the slightest damage. One thousand men had to make good their retreat upon the ice toward the Danish settlements, some 600 miles distant, and all arrived safely with the exception of two, who died from the effects of spirituous liquors they injudiciously drank. Captain Parker, at the time I saw him, was sixty-nine years of age, and good, to all appearance, for half a score more in the arctic regions. He had been navigating those northern seas (whaling) for forty-five years, with an interval of about five years, when he rested. He commenced in 1815, and was a commander in 1820. He had never lost a ship. On the present voyage neither vessel had a chronometer. They depended upon dead reckoning for their longitude.

There was a doctor on board, quite a young man, and apparently of merit. He had been one year in Springfield, Ohio. The True-love is well known in arctic history as connected with the late searching expeditions. In 1849 she landed some coals at Cape Hay, in Lancaster Sound, as requested by Lady Franklin, who sent them out, that fuel might be deposited at every likely spot where her husband and his companions might possibly visit. This remarkable vessel is 100 years old, and was built in Philadelphia, Pa. I explained to Captain Parker all about my plans, and he expressed himself much interested in them, promising to let me have a boat I desired, as an additional one to that I should get from the George Henry, and which would be needed to carry my stores. On Captain Parker's invitation I remained to dinner, and