Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/37

18 After spending an hour at this interesting spot, taking bearings of distant objects, and observing the general appearance of the locality, I reluctantly retraced my steps to our encampment, a distance of two miles, where I found on the sledge everything in readiness for our departure.

At 9.19 we set out on our return to Rescue Harbour. When out on the sea-ice, we stopped by the edge of the floe, next the open water, at the carcass of the ookgook killed by Ebierbing the day before. In the dilemma which followed as to what we should do with it, I proposed that it should be carried to land and buried under heavy stones, supposing that Captain B, then at Cape True with his men, might send a boat's crew round by Frobisher Bay, which was all open water, and get the blubber, and perhaps the meat, and also some of our deposited seals. But Ebierbing assured me that it mattered not what might be the size or the weight of the stones covering it, Ninoo would find out the deposit and rip it up. It was finally concluded to save only the skin. To effect this, they girdled the animal's body, cutting the skin transversely in widths of about five or six inches, and then slipped it off in cylinders, each of which was to be afterward cut spirally, making a long strip of skin, which is of great value for walrus and seal lines, and dog-traces. This ookgook was an object of more than common interest. Though so easily despatched—the rifle ball, on penetrating his skull, causing instant death—yet, as Ebierbing pointed out, it bore numerous marks of wounds received in a conflict with a polar bear. It had had a struggle with its mighty foe, and had escaped. We did not get ready to proceed on our journey until 12 We then crossed the floe at the south side of Hudson's Island, taking the same route we had travelled three times before. When we were nearly through Kane's Channel, and while I was examining its shores, having occasion to make some record, I opened the covers of my note-book, and found, to my consternation, that its contents were gone! I knew not what to do. I felt that, if they should not be recovered,