AN ESQUIMAUX LONG BRANCH. . r >S 



gel Land were again in view ; but progress toward them 

 was stopped by ice when twenty miles distant from land. 

 Daring the flight the Corwin stood along the ice-pack, and 

 the next morning found her hove to off Herald Island. A 

 fierce gale was blowing, during which the iron ice-breaker 

 was lost ; and as the oak sheathing was entirely gone around 

 the bows (leaving nothing to break ice with but three-and- 

 oiie-half-inch Oregon fir plank), it was not deemed prudent 

 to venture into the ice again. The gale lasted several days, 

 and, after it had subsided, the Corwin cruised leisurely east- 

 ward, into the vicinity of Kotzebue Sound. 



Near the entrance of Hotham Inlet is an Esquimaux Long 

 Branch, where the natives resort in summer for trade and 

 pleasure, and about six hundred were there assembled when 

 the Corwin arrived. 



" Here the Captain and the Herald correspondent, enter- 

 ing into competition with the natives in several kinds of 

 athletics, and coming out ahead, were invited to shoot with 

 a bow and arrow at a mark which had been missed several 

 times. It was not an archery club, composed of young 

 ladies and spooney men, against which we had to contend, 

 but the real live, primitive man, who procured his dinner by 

 means of the spear and feathered shaft. So the captain, 

 resolving himself into a toxopholite, and pulling himself 

 together for a mighty effort, discharged his arrow, and. 

 through pure accident, succeeded in driving it into the tar- 

 get the first shot of course refusing to shoot a second 

 time to the great surprise of the unsuspecting bystand- 



ers." 



On the 14th of September the voyagers left the Arctic 

 sea and started for home. At St. Michaels they were obliged 

 to take on board the already over-crowded ship a party of 

 shipwrecked men, who, after twenty-one days of privation, 

 had reached St. Michaels from Golovin Bay. On the 21st 

 of October they arrived at San Francisco. 



