Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/144

Rh which at first ran in a northwest direction, and then, for a short distance, more northerly. As I walked along, charmed with the prospect before me, I came across a skull, which I took up for the purpose of ascertaining from the Innuits to what animal it belonged. I afterwards found that it was that of a white whale. I saw around me, as I advanced, that vegetation was abundant, and signs of animal life were very numerous. As I rounded a rocky eminence by the river side, at a distance of a mile from where I had left the boat, a beautiful cascade, at the head of tide-water, was before me, and at its base a little sheet of water nearly covered with Brent geese.

From this point an extensive and picturesque scene burst upon my view. Before me were long and wide plains, meadows of grass, smoothly-sloping hills, and a range of mountains beyond, which, parting in one particular spot, formed, as it were, a natural gateway, that might almost lead, in fancy, to some fairy land beyond. At my left, across the river, was a ridge of white, which I afterward named Silliman's Fossil Mount, and behind it the unbroken front of a line of mountains extending northwesterly to the opening which I have called the Great Gateway. On the other, or northern side, the mountains continued from this singular opening on by Frobisher Bay to the locality around Field Bay, far to the southwest and eastward. Flocks of little chirping birds greeted me at every turn, and nowyers and ducks were in numbers before my eye. Words cannot express my delight, in view of this scene, as I stood by the waterfall, beholding its white spray, and the clear, limpid stream of the river. The fall is about twenty-five feet in three or four rods, and at no place over four feet descent at once. The river is not so large as the Sylvia Grinnell, and yet, though the season is evidently a dry one, much water flows along, and at certain portions of the year this stream must discharge a large