CAPE YORK IN SIGHT.
The schooner lay motionless during the night, but early in the morning a fair wind sent us again upon our course, and this wind held steadily through the day. Icebergs rose before us and set behind us in solemn procession. My journal designates them as "mile-stones of the ocean." The lofty, snow-crowned highlands behind Cape York rose at length above the horizon, and the bold, dark-sided cape itself was, after a while, seen "advancing in the bosom of the sea."
We did not meet any field-ice until near noon of the 25th. I had been aloft in anxious watching during almost all of the whole preceding day and night; but when I had made up my mind that we should clear Melville Bay without a single brush with the enemy, a line of whiteness revealed itself in the distance. We were not long in reaching it, and, selecting the most conspicuous opening, forced our way through. It proved to be only a loose "pack" about fifteen miles wide, and, under a full pressure of canvas, we experienced little difficulty in "boring" it.
IN THE NORTH WATER.
And now we were in the "North Water." We had passed Melville Bay in fifty-five hours.
Standing close in under Cape York, I kept a careful lookout for natives. The readers of the narrative of Dr. Kane may remember that that navigator took with him from one of the southern settlements of Greenland a native hunter, who, after adhering to the fortunes of the expedition through nearly two years, abandoned it, (as reported,) for a native bride, to live with the wild Esquimaux who inhabit the shores of the headwaters of Baffin Bay. This boy was named Hans. Anticipating that, growing tired of his self-imposed banishment, he would take up his residence at Cape York, with the hope of being picked up by some friendly ship, I ran in to seek him. Passing along the coast at rifle-shot I soon discovered a group of human beings making signs to attract attention. Heaving the vessel to, I went ashore in a boat, and there, sure enough, was the object of my search. He quickly recognized Sonntag and myself, and called us by name.
AN ESQUIMAU FAMILY.
Six years' experience among the wild men of this barren coast had brought him to their level of filthy ugliness. His companions were his wife, who carried her first-born in a hood upon her back; her brother, a bright-eyed boy of twelve years, and "an ancient dame with voluble and flippant tongue," her mother. They were all dressed in skins, and, being the first Esquimaux we had seen whose habits remained wholly uninfluenced by contact with civilization, they were, naturally, objects of much interest to us all.
Hans led us up the hill-side, over rough rocks and through deep snow-drifts, to his tent. It was pitched about two hundred feet above the level of the sea, in a most inconvenient position for a hunter; but it was his "lookout." Wearily he had watched, year after year, for the hoped-for vessel; but summer after summer passed and the vessel came not, and he still sighed for his southern home and the friends of his youth.
His tent was a sorry habitation. It was made after the Esquimau fashion, of seal-skins, and was barely large enough to hold the little family who were grouped about us.