528 MR. J. K. KANE'S NARRATIVE. 



"Pond's Bay, as it is called, seemed to all of us noth- 

 ing else but an extension of Admiralty Inlet. We kept 

 along 1 its north coast for thirty-five miles, and could 

 see, perhaps, forty miles further, but without finding its 

 westernmost shore. A visit to an Esquimaux village, 

 some twenty miles up the bay, was the only incident. 

 The men, with a single exception, were out on their 

 hunting-parties ; but the women were there, as commu- 

 nicative in their unknown dialect as any we had met of 

 the grosser sex. They were certainly no beauties, and 

 their costume was a little extravagant even for the 

 Esquimaux fashions, as we had seen them. They had 

 their faces tattooed with lampblack, in a set of dotted 

 lines, radiating from the corners of the mouth ; and their 

 very long wide boots were hitched, awkwardly enough, 

 by a loop to the waistband of their seal-skin trousers. 



" They appeared to be of a superior race to the 

 Greenland natives. They were larger and stronger, 

 their kayaks were better built, and they had much more 

 roomy tents. 



" The whole of Pond's Bay showed one dreary, in- 

 hospitable coast-line. We were all of us glad when 

 our commander gave the order to make for the eastern 

 coast of Baffin's Bay. 



" We had an eight-knot breeze, and were not more 

 than two hundred miles from Upernavik. There was 

 every chance of the wind continuing, so that we confi- 

 dently expected to reach that port in the course of the 

 week. We thought we were to the southward of the 

 pack ; and the heavy sea, which made us all sea-sick 

 after our long exemption from rough water, strengthened 

 this conviction. But we were mistaken. The very 

 next day it was before us, an impenetrable barrier. 

 There was no help for it ; we had to run further to the 

 south how much further it was hardly worth while to 



