Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/468



schooner I will leave at Port Foulke; and, remaining there only long enough to see the machinery set in motion for starting the hunt, collecting the Esquimaux, and establishing the discipline of the colony, I will seek Cape Isabella, and thence steam northward by the route already designated. If I cannot reach the open sea in one season, I may the next; in any event, I shall always have at Port Foulke a productive source of food and furs, and a vessel to carry them to Cape Isabella, upon which I may fall back; and if I need dogs, they will be reared at the colony in any numbers that may be required. Besides, if in this exploration I should be deficient in means, and the expedition should be hereafter left entirely to its own resources, a sufficient profit may be made out of the colony in oils, furs, walrus ivory, eider down, etc., to pay at least a very considerable proportion of the wages of the employés, beside subsisting them. The whole region around Port Foulke is teeming with animal life, and one good hunter could feed twenty mouths. Both my winter and summer experience proves the correctness of this opinion. The sea abounds in walrus, seal, narwhal, and white whale; the land in reindeer and foxes; the islands and the cliffs, in summer, swarm with birds; and the ice is the roaming-ground of the bears."

Thus much for the future; let me now come back to the present.

Inglefield has very correctly exhibited the expansion of Smith Sound, as I have had most excellent opportunity for observing, both in my passage over, and from Cape Isabella. He has placed some of the capes too far north, and his local attraction, probably,