Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/289

270 our journey, when, the wind having increased to a gale, accompanied with drift, and Koojesse being quite ill, we were obliged to hold over, and keep in the igloo all day. Our fare that day was raw seal and raw ducks. The ducks were very fat, the fat being like butter both in appearance and taste. In the morning of Friday, the 16th, the weather was thick, and at times spitting snow. We were up at 3 intending to start early, and complete the crossing of Frobisher Bay to Kingaite coast; but the shore-ice by the island of our encampment was in such an impassable condition from ebb tide that we had to wait for the flood. At 7.30 we were under way, passing to the westward and northward for some time along the coast of Resor Island on our left, over the rough ice, and among the thousand and one islands of that part of Frobisher Bay. At 11 we arrived at White Island, which I had seen on my boat-voyage in the previous fall, and then thought very remarkable. On this occasion I landed to examine it and procure geological specimens. Thirty minutes after meridian we arrived close to a point of Kingaite coast, whence I could see what the natives call Sharko (low land), where I had my eighteenth encampment of the boat-voyage in the fall of 1861. Having reached the point—Turn Point, as I called it—where my survey of the Kingaite coast terminated when on that voyage, I turned about and resumed the survey, passing rapidly down a beautiful channel—Cincinnati Press Channel, as I named it, in honour of the Associated Press of the Queen City—between Kingaite and Pugh Island.

At 3 while we pursued our journey down the channel, an exciting scene occurred. A polar bear, with its cub, was observed on the ice near the base of a bold high mountain. Immediately the dogs were stopped and the guns loaded.