Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/253

232 and curiously watching the various efforts made to sustain and enjoy life by these singular people of the North. In a future chapter I shall dwell upon this more largely; but now I must only say that great success attended Ugarng's exertions, and when we all started for the igloo village it was with a good store of food upon our sledge. We arrived in the afternoon, and, after the usual feast, passed the evening in social conversation. I had now been forty-two nights in an igloo, living with the natives most of the time on their food and according to their own customs. I therefore considered that I had gained some experience in the matter, and having made several observations for determining the locality of places, prepared for my return. I bade adieu to my Innuit friends in the village, and on the 21st of February left what I then called "my Northern home" for the ship. I was accompanied by Ebierbing, Ugarng, and Kunniu, and we had the sledge and dogs with us. The parting from Tookoolito was affecting. She evidently felt it; but the hope of herself and husband soon being with me again on my future excursions removed much of the disappointment she then felt at my going away. In fact, both she and Ebierbing were as children to me, and I felt toward them like what a parent would.

It was a fine day when we left the village at 7 and rapid progress was made. As we moved out into the bay, a glow of red light suffused the heavens at the eastern part of the horizon, and when we had made about four miles south the sun began to lift his glorious face, his darting rays kissing the peaks of the mountains around. Occasionally I looked back to the igloos where I had spent so many days—far from uncomfortable ones—among my Innuit friends; but soon they were out of sight, and my thoughts now turned wholly to the warm hearts that I hoped to meet on board that night. At 9 we reached new ice, which started the sealers to try their hands once more for a prize. In ten minutes