MR. J. K. KANE'S NARRATIVE. 527 



of our want of success. We next ran down to Suthei* 

 land Island, took up our now useless flag-staff, and tore 

 down the cairn we had placed there on our way up. 

 There was a poor little white fox watching us from the 

 rocks above, while we were at work, evidently wonder- 

 ing what it all meant. He came so close that we could 

 have knocked him down with a boat-hook, but we let 

 him alone ; we were not short of provisions, and had 

 no time to convert him into a specimen. 



" We pushed on through rain and fog to Hakluyt 

 Island, where we found our comrades of the Release, 

 and spent a few hurried hours in their company. 



" The red sno.io, that Dr. Kane has described in his 

 narrative, was abundant here ; and wherever between 

 the ledges of the rock there was a chance for soil, a 

 tiny little horseradish sprang up ambitiously through 

 the frost, with leaves no bigger than your thumb-nail. 

 The miniature plant, flower, root, and all, might have 

 filled a very moderate tea-cup. 



" It is hardly worth while to tell of our efforts to find 

 Captain Inglefield's Esquimaux settlement in Whale 

 Sound. It was the old story of fog and drizzle, ice and 

 sleet. We gave it up, and, taking the Eelease in tow, 

 bent our course for Lancaster Sound. 



"But the ice, the everlasting ice ! We were more 

 than two hundred miles off when it caught us. It was 

 heavier than any we had seen even in Melville Bay. 

 For some days it held us like flies in amber, in spite of 

 Bails, with now and then a puff to fill them, and all the 

 steam that Newell could raise in his boiler. It was, 

 indeed, a mercy that a g*ale caught us at last, or we 

 might have been there still. We drove before it, the 

 ice keeping us company, as if loth to lose us, and, find- 

 ing that we could not reach Cape Isabella, made a 

 detour to Possession Bay. 



