Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/318

Rh had lifted herself up full two feet, showing how much lighter she had become through the consumption of stores since the period of freezing in.

On the 3d of May, which was a beautiful and warm day, Ebierbing and Tookoolito arrived, with all their effects, intending to stay with me until I was ready, as previously arranged, to leave for King William's Land. They were well, and had got through the interval since I had last seen them in the usual precarious manner, sometimes with, sometimes without success in sealing, so alternately with or without food.

The following morning we had another snow-storm, which continued with slight intermissions for several days.

On the 6th of May, Captain B, wishing the dogs to be well fed previous to being employed in transporting the whale-boats, stores, &c. over to the whaling dépôt at Cape True, asked several of the Innuits to take them over to Oopungnewing, where there was plenty of walrus skin and meat; but one and all refused. They said "the weather was too bad;" whereupon I volunteered to go with any Innuit that would accompany me; but, finally, the gale having abated. Captain B himself determined to go, taking with him two of the Esquimaux, who at last consented to accompany him. There were twenty-five dogs, and these we had harnessed to a sledge by the Innuits Charley and Jim Crow, who were ready to start. Captain B went ahead, and I, following with the sledge, soon overtook him, but not until I had seen a good specimen of dog-driving. At the beginning it was slow work to get the dogs under way, but, once on the start, away they went, pell-mell together, and swiftly, over the fair white snow. It was amusing to see my Greenland dogs, with the others, weaving and knitting, braiding and banding their traces into knots and webs that apparently would defy human devices to unravel. One dog would leap over the backs of a dozen others; another dog, receiving the snap of the thirty-feet lash in the driver's hands,