Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/116

Rh it seemed as if a complete chain stretched across the bay to Kingaite. On reaching the spot which we selected for our eighth encampment—Cape Stevens —I left my crew to unload the boat and erect tupics, while I ascended a mountain that flanked us. On the top I found numerous shells and fossils, some of which I brought away. On descending I took the opposite or north-east side, next a bight that made up into the land. This side of the mountain was almost perpendicular. The winter forces of the North had thrown down to the base a mass of stone, which enabled me to pass upon a kind of causeway to the foot of another mount toward the tupics. There I could not help pausing and glancing around in wondering awe. I cannot put on paper the feelings which struggled within me as I made my way over that debris, and looked above and around me. God built the mountains, and He tumbleth them down again at His will! Overhead was hanging the whole side of a mountain, ready, as it seemed, at any moment, and by the snap of one's finger, to fall! I felt as if obliged to take light and gentle steps. I breathed softly; and, as I looked and looked again, I praised God for all His mighty works.

I ought to say that, on a better view of this mountain, I perceived on its perpendicular side large caverns, with huge projecting rocks hanging directly over them.

I returned to the tupics; and that night, as I lay on my back by our camp-fire, viewing the glorious heavens, I beheld the aurora in all its wondrous beauty. In the vicinity of the moon, where the aurora was dancing and racing to and fro, it was strangely grand. But the most remarkable phenomenon of the kind I ever witnessed was the peculiar movement of the clouds overhead. For some length of time they moved by "hitches," passing with the wind slowly, and then stopping for a few seconds. I called the attention of the Innuits to it, and they noticed this as something they had never seen