Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/22

Rh made our first encampment on the ice, and lay down to repose upon a couch of snow.

At 10:30 of June 6th we resumed our journey, and soon after observed a seal upon the ice; but, as we were to windward, it scented us, and down it went. We were still among hummocks, and enveloped in fog. Before noon the fog lifted, and we found ourselves in sight of land near Lupton Channel. We stopped a while opposite the entrance to this channel for a seal which was discovered ahead. But seal, land, mountains, and clouds became closed in by thick fog; a snow-storm came on from the W.N.W. and it soon blew a gale.

This weather compelling us to hold over, we all left the sledge and dogs, and went a few rods on to the land, to prospect for a suitable spot for an encampment. We found one by the side of a mountain of rock. Here we broke up a beam—a part of our sledge—for fuel to prepare our coffee. We ought, for this purpose, to have taken with us more of the ooksook of the seal taken the day previous; but we expected to have captured another by that time. We saw two in the morning, but they were shy, and went down. Had it not been for the hummocks, we should have pursued our course toward Hall's Island; but it requires weather in which one can see more than five fathoms ahead to travel safely over such ice.

The land on which we here encamped is an island about a quarter of a mile long, which I have named Sylvia, at the east side of the entrance to Lupton Channel. When on the highest part of it, about 500 feet above the sea, I drew the following sketch.

Here before me, looking southerly, was the open water of Lupton Channel, which, as my native attendants informed me, never freezes over, in consequence of the swiftly running tides. Yonder, leading south-easterly around the bold front of Lok's Land, is Bear Sound; there, farther south, the low islands; and, showing darkly over these, the open water of Frobisher