Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/481

 *tunah,—"Our people have but a few more suns to live!" Would they all come up to Etah if I should return, and stay there, and bring guns and hunters? His answer was a prompt, "Yes." He told me, as Kalutunah had done before, that Etah was the best hunting-place on the coast, only the ice broke up so soon and was always dangerous; while Whale Sound was frozen during nearly all the year, and gave the hunters greater security.

After returning to the schooner, I pulled up into Barden Bay, taking with me the magnetic and surveying instruments and facilities for completing my botanical and other collections, and for photographing the fine scenery of the bay. Landing on its north shore, we found the hill-side covered in many places with a richer green sward than I had ever seen north of Upernavik, except once on a former occasion at Northumberland Island. The slope was girdled with the same tall cliffs which everywhere meet the eye along this coast; and the same summer streams of melted snow tumbled over them, and down the slope from the mountain sides. The day was quite calm and the sky almost cloudless. The sun shone broadly upon us, and the temperature was 51°. Immense schools of whales and walrus, with an occasional seal, were sporting in the water; flocks of sea-fowl went careering about the icebergs and through the air, and myriads of butterflies fluttered among the flowers; while from the opposite side of the bay an immense glacier, whose face was almost buried in the sea, carried the eye along a broad and winding valley, up steps of ice of giant height, and over smooth plains of whiteness, around the base of the hills, until