Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/298

Rh felt the cold severely, and had recourse to various contrivances to keep some warmth in our limbs. No doubt I presented rather a grotesque appearance as I sat with native stockings on my hands now and then instead of outside mittens. Toward midnight we felt the want of shelter and rest; but, in my own case, all sense of discomfort was banished by the beauty which Nature placed before me. The grandeur of Kingaite's grotto mountains that we were leaving behind us, with their contrasts of light and shade, as viewed in the night, and watched as light increased with advancing day, tilled my soul with inexpressible delight. It was like beholding a mighty city of cathedrals, monuments, palaces, and castles overthrown by an earthquake, the ruins resting amid mountain drifts of snow. At 3 of the 18th, when near the islands which diversify Frobisher Bay in the locality between M'Lean Island and Chase Island, the sun began to peer out from behind the dark clouds, when we stopped the dogs, threw ourselves flat on the bare snow, and slept soundly for one hour and thirty-five minutes. At 8 we arrived at the eighteenth encampment (which was the same as the tenth), whence we had started on the 8th instant, making an absence while on this journey of just ten days. The number of miles travelled was 176 nautical, or 203 English miles, this distance having been made in exactly fifty-four hours and thirty-one minutes travelling time. A brief extract from my notes, written after my return from this journey, reads as follows:— "Taking my departure from the tenth encampment on May 8, 1862, and sledging 176 miles (nautical), now, on my return to same place, my ' dead reckoning ' —which has been kept independent of all the astronomical observations taken during the trip—makes the same place differ in latitude 2$83⁄100$ miles, and in longitude less than half a geographical mile, an approximation I little expected to make."

I found Henry very sick, and it was necessary that I