Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/283

264 After staying here as long as my time would permit, and having determined that no "strait" or passage exists in this direction, I started on my return, and soon again arrived at the Narrows. Here the view below was one of the most interesting I had beheld since arriving North. From the Narrows, which is from one-sixth to one-third of a mile wide, to the termination of this arm of Ward's Inlet, is a distance of four miles. This beautiful sheet of water I have named Ann Maria Port. As we made our way through the Narrows on our return, the view, on looking down the inlet, was truly

TERMINATION OF WARD'S INLET—THE NARROWS AND ANN MARIA PORT.

magnificent. The long line of black, jagged, buttress-like mountains on either side of the pure white pathway before us presented a scene that I shall not soon forget.

As we returned down this inlet, going at a slower rate than usual, a seal was seen ahead. In an instant the dogs, which were very hungry, bounded off at a rate of not less than twelve miles an hour. The seal, frightened, made a plunge down into its hole; the dogs, flying onward so furiously, passed it, but the wind, carrying the smell of the seal to