Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/263

244, but an impromptu igloo was planned which we built of the sledge and snow, getting out the blocks of the latter in the best way possible, that is to say, with a broken sledge-beam. When the igloo was finished, and before the door was sealed up, we took in the dogs, and were soon really comfortable. The storm came down fearfully, but we were well protected; the beating snow sought an entrance, but could find none. Fortunately, we had saved a piece of the pemmican from our lunch, and this served to give us just a mouthful for supper; some fragments of the meat-biscuit also remained; and after this frugal repast and some pipes of tobacco, we retired to our snow bed. I had one dog for my feet-warmer, another for my pillow, while a third was arched at my back. Henry was also comfortably provided for. My diary for that day, written in the igloo of a white man's invention, concludes as follows:—

"Now within a few minutes of midnight. Hark! a singular noise strikes the ear. Perhaps it is a polar bear! We listen. Again the same alarming noise. Another sound, and we determine its source. It is the snoring of one of the dogs! So good-night to all the sleeping world. Heaven bless all those who need it; none needs it more than myself." The next morning, April 13th, I arose from my snowy couch at five o'clock, knocked my head against the snow door, made my way over its ruins on all-fours, then stood erect and looked around. The heavens seemed to indicate the dawn of a beautiful day. I called up Henry, and soon the dogs were harnessed, when we proceeded toward the head of this narrow bay—Newton's Fiord as I named it—which we reached at 7 The termination I found to consist of a broken narrow plain, walled by a line of mountains on either side. Before we reached this spot the snow commenced falling, though the fall was accompanied by no wind, and the weather