Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/311

 year; but while I had no hesitation in setting out with dog-sledges at that period, the recollection of Dr. Kane's disasters were too fresh in my mind to justify me in sending out a foot party in the March temperatures.

While waiting for the frost to build a bridge for me around Sunrise Point, I was feeding up and strengthening my dogs. They soon proved to be very inferior to the animals which I had lost, and it was necessary to give them as much rest and good rations as possible. I went repeatedly to Chester Valley in pursuit of reindeer. Along the borders of the lake these beasts had flocked in great numbers during the winter, and whole acres of snow had been tossed up with their hoofs, while searching for the dead vegetation of the previous summer. The rabbits and the ptarmigan had followed them, to gather the buds of the willow-stems which were occasionally tossed up, and which form their subsistence. During one of my journeys I secured a fine specimen skin of a doe, but in order to do this I was obliged to take it off with my own hands before it should freeze. The temperature at the time was 33° below zero, and I do not ever remember to have had my regard for Natural History so severely tested.

I was exceedingly anxious to recover the body of Mr. Sonntag before I left the vessel; and, desiring to secure the assistance of Kalutunah for that purpose, I drove over to Etah a few days after he had become fixed there. I had eleven of my new dogs harnessed to the sledge, and Jensen "was himself again."

I found Kalutunah very comfortably fixed and apparently well contented. I carried with me as a present for a house-warming a quarter of a recently-captured