Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/286

Rh encampment, and then recross the bay to place of tenth encampment. The weather is thick this morning, but there is a bright streak along the horizon in the east. The dogs are very hungry. Last night they ate up the whip-lash, which was thirty feet long. They are voracious. I witnessed a sight some days since of a hungry dog swallowing down a piece of kow (walrus hide and blubber) one inch and a half square and six feet long in seven seconds! The act I timed by chronometer." At 5 we left the place of sixteenth encampment, directing our course to the westward, and in two hours arrived at the island Noo-ook-too-ad-loo, which Sharkey and myself ascended. Here we saw some partridges and many rabbit tracks. One of the former Sharkey shot. While on this island I took, a round of angles, sighting various important points necessary toward completing my chart of the bay. Thence we departed at 9  striking nearly due west to cross the Bay of Frobisher. We found the ice very rough, and consequently our progress was slow. A few minutes before twelve, meridian, as we were about to enter among the numerous islands that lie across the bay, beginning at "Frobisher's Farthest," we stopped, when I proceeded to make observations for latitude, solar bearings, &c. When I found my position was such that various capes, promontories, islands, and inlets that I had visited were in sight, and knowing I could then better determine their relative geographical position, I was delighted, and especially so when I had the President's Seat dancing and circling round in the mirror of my sextant, till it finally rested on the mountain heights of Frobisher's Farthest, on the exact spot where I had made astronomical observations on the 22d of August, 1861, the previous year. Thence we proceeded among many islands, and came to a channel where we found a space of open water abounding in ducks and other aquatic birds, and seals. Here the tide was rushing furiously through like a mill-race, and this prevented us from securing more than half of our game, for as the ducks and seals were shot they were liable to be carried rapidly away beneath the ice.