Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/331

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Water among the ice, and finally it was sunk in the mouth of Wolstenholme Sound. This was four summers ago. Another had seen the same vessel, but the event had happened only two years before; while still another had accidentally set fire to the brig and burned her up where she lay in Van Rensselaer Harbor. No two of them gave the same account. Indeed, one of them asserted quite positively that the vessel had drifted down into the bay below, was there frozen up the next winter, and he had there boarded her when on a bear-hunt. Kalutunah had nothing positive to say on the subject, but he rather inclined to the story of the burning.
 * mau had seen a vessel drifting about in the North

Every object around me was filled with old associations, some pleasant and some painful. I visited the graves of Baker and the jovial cook, Pierre, and looked for the pyramid which Dr. Kane mentions as "our beacon and their tomb-stone," but it was scattered over the rocks, and the conspicuous cross which had been painted on its southern face was only here and there shown by a stone with a white patch upon it.

On our homeward journey we camped again at Cairn Point, and made there a long halt, as I desired to get another view, from a loftier position than before. Jensen was fortunate enough to shoot a deer, and our weary and battered dogs were refreshed with it. Thence to the schooner was one of the wildest rides that I remember ever to have made. A terrible gale of wind set upon us, and, with the thermometer at -52°, it carried a sting with it. The drifting snow was battering us at a furious rate; but the dogs, with their heads turned homeward, did their best, and the thirty miles were made in three and a half hours.