Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/164

Rh Sun shining occasionally on the mountains each side of Frobisher Bay.... Stop at meridian on an island after passing through a channel, the island of the group running from Frobisher's Farthest to Kingaite, and here ascended a high hill to triangulate. "... As we came up the channel between the islands that lie across the Bay of Frobisher, found the tide (which was ebbing) to run very swiftly. Made no headway for full half an hour, though under sail and oars. Through this channel the ebbing tide was running toward the head of Frobisher Bay—a curious feature, but accounted for by the position of the islands each side the channel."

After spending half an hour on the island, we directed our course for the north side of the bay, which we made in one hour; thence we coasted along toward Rae's Point, where we arrived at 3.15 and made our nineteenth encampment at the place of our ninth. During the evening the Innuits fired many salutes, and there was clearly some demonstration making, though I could not tell whether it was to invite the good spirits or to repel the bad, of whose presence thereabouts I suppose the angeko had told them. It would seem from the shouts of men, women, and children, and the reports of the guns, as if the 4th of July had come again. Jack's wife kept up a kind of shouting and howling till past midnight. After she had continued it for over two hours, with a voice that made the mountains about ring, Jack joined her, he being an angeko. At midnight there was a round of guns. Charley was in the same tupic as myself, having been asleep until the firing aroused him. He sprang up, and was but a moment in getting ready to join his people. Soon Jack, with his howling wife, came down from the hill where they were, and marched around, keeping up the same hideous noises—so loud and broken, that only throats of brass, and cracked ones too, could equal them. It was a miserable, sleepless night for me—in Bedlam, and racked with pains.