Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/330

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to deviate somewhat, in the small chart which accompanies this volume, from the chart of Dr. Kane.

The coast along which I had been traveling was a succession of well-remembered landmarks. The tall sandstone cliffs were as familiar as the rows of lofty warehouses and stores on Broadway. Both up and down the coast I had gone so often from Van Rensselaer Harbor that I knew every point of land, and gorge, and ravine as if I had seen them but yesterday. But when I got down into the harbor itself how changed was every thing! Instead of the broad, smooth ice over which I had so often strolled, there was but a uniform wilderness of hummocks. In the place where the Advance once lay, the ice was piled up nearly as high as were her mast-heads. Fern Rock was almost overridden by the frightful avalanche which had torn down into the harbor from the north, and the locality of the storehouse on Butler Island was almost buried out of sight. No vestige of the Advance remained, except a small bit of a deck-plank which I picked up near the site of the old Observatory. The fate of the vessel is of course a matter only of conjecture. When the ice broke up—it may have been the year we left her or years afterward—she was probably carried out to sea and ultimately crushed and sunk. From the Esquimaux I obtained many contradictory statements. Indeed, with the best intentions in the world, these Esquimaux have great trouble in telling a straight story. Even Kalutunah is not to be depended upon if there is the ghost of a chance for invention. He had been to the vessel, but at one time it was one year and then again it was another; he had carried off much wood, as many other Esquimaux had done. Another Esqui