In digging up the piece of ground for our garden, we found an incredible quantity of bones scattered about and concealed under the little soil there was. They were principally those of walruses and seals, and had evidently been left a long time before by Esquimaux, in the course of their wandering visits to the island, being gradually covered by the vegetable mould formed upon the spot which they helped to fertilize. Afterwards, when the land became more clear of snow, this was found to be the case to a much greater extent, every spot of ground upon the southeast point, which was not absolutely a rock, being covered with these relics. Some graves were also discovered, in one of which were a human skull, apparently a hundred years buried, and some pieces of wood that had probably been parts of spears or arrows almost mouldered to dust. Knowing as we do the antiseptic properties of this climate, animal or vegetable substances in this state of decay convey to the mind an idea of much greater age than they would in any other part of the world.
[Escape from their winter quarters was not accomplished till the 1st of July, they having been for nine months frozen in the ice.]
FUGITIVES FROM THE ARCTIC SEAS.
ELISHA KENT KANE.
[Of all works of travel in the Arctic seas, none have attracted more attention than Dr. Kane’s “Arctic Explorations,” an attractively written journal of hardship and adventure that had the interest of a romance to most readers. The expedition ended in the enforced abandonment of the ship and a long boat journey over the ice, in which the adventurers experienced many perils and suffered much from hunger. We give the concluding incidents of this journey.]
It was the 18th of July before the aspects of the ice about us gave me the hope of progress. We had prepared ourselves for the new encounter with the sea and its trials by laying in a store of lumme [an Arctic bird], two hundred and fifty of which had been duly skinned, spread open, and dried on the rocks as the entremets of our bread-dust and tallow.
My journal tells of disaster in its record of our setting out. In launching the “Hope” from the frail and perishing ice-wharf on which we found our first refuge from the gale, she was precipitated into the sludge below, carrying away rail and bulwark, losing overboard our best shot-gun, Bonsall’s favorite, and, worst of all, that universal favorite, our kettle,—soup-kettle, paste-kettle, tea-kettle, water-kettle, in one. I may mention before I pass that the kettle found its substitute and successor in the remains of a tin can which a good aunt of mine had filled with ginger-nuts two years before, and which had long survived the condiments that once gave it dignity. “Such are the uses of adversity.”
Our descent to the coast followed the margin of the fast ice. After passing the Crimson Cliffs of Sir John Ross it wore almost the dress of a holiday excursion,—a rude one, perhaps, yet truly one in feeling. Our course, except where a protruding glacier interfered with it, was nearly parallel to the shore. The birds along it were rejoicing in the young summer, and when we halted it was upon some green-clothed cape near a stream of water from the ice-fields above. Our sportsmen would clamber up the cliffs and come back laden with little auks; great generous fires of turf, that cost nothing but the toil of gathering, blazed merrily; and our happy oarsmen, after a long day’s work, made easy by the promise ahead, would stretch themselves in the sunshine and dream happily away till called to the morning wash and prayers. We enjoyed it the more, for we all of us knew that it could not last.
This coast must have been a favorite region at one time with the natives,—a sort of Esquimaux Eden. We seldom encamped without finding the ruins of their habitations, for the most part overgrown with lichens, and exhibiting every mark of antiquity. One of these, in latitude 76° 20′, was once, no doubt, an extensive village. Cairns for the safe deposit of meat stood in long lines, six or eight in a group; and the huts, built of large rocks, faced each other, as if disposed on a street or avenue.