As the last glimpse of the little church was shut out from our view, many a prayer was silently offered to Him in his infinite mercy to protect and guide us in our endeavours, and to vouchsafe us a safe return again to home and civilization.
[1] On his return to England he wrote to his friend, saying, “I have been in 73°, finding the sea all open and forty leagues between land and land. The passage (the N.W.) is most probable, the execution easie, as at my coming you shall fully knowe.”
[2] It is sometimes spelt Uppernavik. But Upernivik is the correct form. See Rink, p. 354. It means spring in the Eskimo language. Upernivik is in 72° 48′ N. The most northern Danish station is Tasiusak, in 73° 24′ N.
CHAPTER IV.
MELVILLE BAY AND THE NORTH WATER.
| “Embark with me, while I new tracts explore, With flying sails and breezes from the shore. Not that my song, in such a scanty space, So large a subject fully can embrace. Not though I were supplied with iron lungs, A hundred mouths, filled with as many tongues. But steer my vessel with a steady hand, And coast along the shore in sight of land. Nor will I try thy patience with a train Of preface, or what ancient poets feign.” Virgil. |
Threading our way through narrow passages between numerous islands that lay to the eastward of Upernivik, and trusting to the knowledge and guidance of an Eskimo pilot, we felt at length that we had in reality, seen the last for some time, of our fellow men, and that our struggle with the almost insuperable difficulties of the frozen north was about to commence.