LANCASTER SOUND.
The winter abode of these Esquimaux appeared to be sunk from three to four feet below the level of the ground: a ring of stones, a few feet high, were all the vestiges we saw. No doubt they completed the habitation by building a house of snow of the usual dome shape over the stones and sunken floor. Having no wood, whale-bones had been here substituted for rafters, as is usual along the whole breadth of the American coast-line from Behring's Straits; but many of the hovels had no rafters. On the whole the impression was, that the natives here lived in a state of much greater barbarity and discomfort than those we had seen about the Danish settlements on the opposite shore.
A cairn was erected by us; a record and some letters deposited for the natives to put on board whalers at a future season; and having placed a number of presents for the poor creatures in the different huts, and on the cachés, we hurried on board and made the best of our way to Possession Bay, and rejoined the "Resolute," from whom we learnt that the "North Star" had placed a record there, to say, that after having failed to cross Baffin's Bay in 1849, she had done so in 1850, and had gone up Lancaster Sound to seek the "Enterprise" and "Investigator," under Sir James Ross, they having, as we knew, meanwhile, gone home, been paid off, recommissioned, and were now, please God, in the Arctic Ocean, by way of Behring's Straits.
August 22d, 1850.—The "Resolute" in company, and steering a course up Lancaster Sound.
The great gateway, within whose portals we were now fast entering, has much in it that is interesting in its associations to an English seaman. Across its mouth, the bold navigator Baffin, 200 years before, had steered, pronounced it a sound, and named it after the Duke of Lancaster. About thirty-five years ago it was converted into a bay by Sir John Ross; and within eighteen months afterwards, Parry, the prince of Arctic navigators, sailed through this very bay, and discovered new lands extending half of the distance towards Behring's Straits, or about 600 miles. To complete the remaining 600 miles of unknown region, Sir John Franklin and his 140 gallant followers had devoted themselves,—with what resolution, with what devotion, is best told by their long absence and our anxiety.
The high and towering ranges of the Byam Martin Mountains looked down upon us from the southern sky, between fast-passing fog-banks and fitful gusts of wind, which soon sobbed themselves into a calm, and steam, as usual, became our friend: with it the "Pioneer," towing the "Resolute" astern, steered for the north shore of Lancaster Sound; and on August 25th we were off Croker Bay, a deep indentation between Cape Warrender and Cape Home. The clouds hung too heavily about the land, distant as we were, to see more than the bare outline, but its broken configuration gave good hope of numerous harbours, fiords, and creeks. From Cape Home, we entered on a new and peculiar region of limestone formation, lofty and tabular, offering to the seaboard cliffs steep and escarped as the imagination can picture to be possible. By the beautiful sketches of Parry's officers, made on his first voyage, we easily recognized the various headlands; the north shore being now alone in view; and indeed, except the mountains in the interior, we saw nothing more of the south shore of Lancaster Sound after leaving Possession Bay.
ICEBERGS AND GLACIERS.
Of Powell Inlet we saw an extensive glacier extending into the sound, and a few loose 'berg pieces floating about. This glacier was regarded with some interest; for, remarkably enough, it is the last one met with in sailing westward to Melville Island.
The iceberg, as it is well known, is the creation of the glacier; and where land of a nature to form the latter does not exist, the former is not met with.
The region we had just left behind us is the true home of the iceberg in the northern hemisphere. There, in Baffin's Bay, where the steep cliffs of cold granitic formation frown over waters where the ordinary "deep sea lead-line" fails to find bottom, the monarch of glacial formations floats slowly from the ravine which has been its birth-place, until fairly launched in the profound waters of the Atlantic, and in the course of many years is carried to the warmer regions of the south, to assist Nature in preserving her great laws of equilibrium of temperature of the air and water.