Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/323

304 right, then to the left, going forward awhile, then back to another opening, and cutting away obstructions.

Several hours of heavy labour were consumed in lifting, pushing, and pulling our boat over several miles of driving, drifting, whirling, crashing, thundering ice. Occasionally, while my company—both men and women—would be getting the boat upon an ice-floe, and dragging it along, the dogs and children accompanying, I would be busily engaged with my instruments taking my "last sights" of the principal places

THE ESCAPE OVER DRIFTING PACK.— MY "LAST SIGHTS."

in and around the ever memorable "Countess of Warwick's Sound," which had been lost to the world for near three hundred years, but now was found. At last we got clear, arriving at open water, when we at once launched the boat and pushed off. From thence it was not long that we were on our way to Cape True, where we arrived in perfect safety, though, within two hours after our arrival, the pack ribbed the whole coast, and we thus narrowly escaped being closed in the second time. Two days after our return, on Friday; August 8th, we were agreeably surprised, in the early morning, by the arrival of Captain B in a boat direct from George Henry Harbour,