CHAPTER XVII—LANCASTER SOUND TO DUNDEE
"To claim the Arctic came the sun,
With banners of the burning zone
Unrolled upon their airy spars.
They froze beneath the light of stars,
And there they float, those streamers old,
Those Northern Lights, forever cold."
The neighborhood of Cape Byam Martin was considered good whaling ground, so we spent the next few days cruising off it and the coast further down, but without seeing anything of interest. Even seals were scarce. It was remarkable how few we saw north of the Arctic circle.
By going aloft, one could always see, in some direction on the ice, a black dot, which represented a seal, but after the tens of thousands seen on the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador, they were scarce indeed; in fact, I never shot one during the whole northern trip.
We found Ponds Bay that paradise of the old whalers so full of ice that we were unable to visit the natives, which was a great disappointment to us all. It was a bad year for seeing much of the land as there was so much ice coming down.