From the Doctor's account I felt most anxious for his return, lest his health, or that of his companions, should receive permanent injury; in fact this was now my only cause of anxiety. The season was rather forward here, and advancing with unusual rapidity, rain and wind dissolving the snow and ice; there was much water in Bellot Strait, extending from Half-way Island eastward to the table-land, and thence in a narrow lane to Long Island. After a day or two I could perceive a vast improvement in Hobson; and my own four men, with the exception of Hampton, who required rest, were in sound health; so also was my companion Petersen. On 24th June Christian shot two small reindeer, which gave us 170 lbs. of meat; a few days before that he shot a seal, which afforded two sumptuous meals for all on board.
TREATMENT OF DOGS.
The time having elapsed during which Young expected to remain absent, and the difficulties of the transit from the western sea having become greatly increased, I set off early on the 25th June with my four men, intending to visit Pemmican Rock; but failing to come across him there, I resolved to carry on provisions as far as Four River Point, in the hope of meeting with him, and of facilitating his return. To our surprise the water had all drained off the frozen surface of the Long Lake, and it therefore afforded excellent travelling. We found the poor dogs lying quietly beside our sledges; they had attacked the pemmican, and devoured a small quantity which was not secured in tin, also some blubber, some leather straps, and a gull that I had shot for a specimen; but they had not apparently relished the biscuit. Poor dogs! they have a hard life of it in these regions. Even Petersen, who is generally kind and humane, seems to fancy they must have little or no feeling: one of his theories is, that you may knock an Esquimaux dog about the head with any article, however heavy, with perfect impunity to the brutes. One of us upbraided him the other day because he broke his whip-handle over the head of a dog. "That was nothing at all," he assured us: some friend of his in Greenland found he could beat his dogs over the head with a heavy hammer,—it stunned them certainly,—but by laying them with their mouths open to the wind, they soon revived, got up and ran about "all right."
We lost no time in giving them a good feed, the first for seven days, yet they did not seem unusually hungry, and soon coiled themselves up to sleep again. Whilst the men and dogs were employed next day in conveying a sledge to the east end of the lake, I walked to Cape Bird to look out for the absent party, but they had not yet returned to Pemmican Rock.
When vainly endeavoring, with felonious intentions, to climb up a steep cliff to the breeding-places of some silvery gulls, I saw and shot a brent goose, seated upon an accessible ledge, and made a prize of four eggs; it seems strange that this bird should have selected so unusual a breeding-place. Many seals were basking on the ice, and the watercourse by which our sledges ascended a week before to the Long Lake was now a strong and rapid stream. A few reindeer were seen.
YOUNG RETURNS SAFELY.
On the 27th I sent three of the men back to the ship, and with Thompson and the dogs went on to Pemmican Rock, where, to our great joy, we happily met Young and his party, who had but just returned there, after a long and successful journey the particulars of which I will give hereafter.
Young was greatly reduced in flesh and strength, so much weakened indeed that for the last few days he had travelled on the dog sledge; Harvey—also far from well—could just manage to keep pace with the sledge; his malady was scurvy. Their journeys had been very depressing; most dismal weather, low, dreary limestone shores devoid of game, and no traces of the lost expedition. The news of our success in the southern journeys greatly cheered them. On the following day we were all once more on board, and indulging in such rapid consumption of eatables as only those can do who have been much reduced by long-continued fatigue and exposure to cold. Venison, ducks, beer and lemon-juice, daily; preserved apples and cranberries three times a week; and pickled whale-skin—a famous antiscorbutic—ad libitum for all who liked it. The weather, which for the last week had been wet, windy, and miserable, now set in fair. The carpenter's hammer, and the men's voices at their work, were new and animating sounds.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] It is a remarkable circumstance that when, in 1830, Sir James Ross discovered Point Victory, he named two points of land, then in sight, Cape Franklin and Cape Jane Franklin respectively. Eighteen years afterwards Franklin's ships perished within sight of those headlands.