Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/390

 efforts; and when I sought for some token of living thing, some track of wild beast,—a fox, or bear, or reindeer,—which had, elsewhere, always crossed me in my journeyings, and saw nothing but two feeble men and our struggling dogs, it seemed indeed as if the Almighty had frowned upon the hills and seas.

Since leaving Cairn Point we had looked most anxiously for bears; but although we had seen many tracks, especially about Cape Frazer, not a single animal had been observed. A bear, indeed, would have been a godsend to us, and would have placed me wholly beyond anxiety respecting the strength of the dogs, as it would not only have put new life into them, but would have given them several days of more substantial rations than the dried beef which they had been so long fed upon.

After a ten hours' march, we found ourselves once more compelled to camp; and four hours of the following day brought us to the southern cape of a bay which was so deep that, as in other cases of like obstruction, we determined to cross over it rather than to follow the shore line. We had gone only a few miles when we found our progress suddenly arrested. Our course was made directly for a conspicuous headland bounding the bay to the northward, over a strip of old ice lining the shore. This headland seemed to be about twenty miles from us, or near latitude 82°, and I was very desirous of reaching it; but, unhappily, the old ice came suddenly to an end, and after scrambling over the fringe of hummocks which margined it, we found ourselves upon ice of the late winter. The unerring instinct of the dogs warned us of approaching danger. They were observed for some time to be moving with unusual caution, and finally