258 SMITH SOUND 



portant, as usual, being that done from the ships. 

 Among the odds and ends easily rememberable was the 

 haul of the seine in Sheridan Lake, near the wintering 

 station of the Alert, which yielded forty-three char 

 (Salmo arcturus], the most northerly freshwater fish; 

 the finding of the nest of the sanderling (Calidris 

 arenarius), now in the Natural History Museum, in 

 82 33', and the discovery of the nesting of the grey 

 phalarope and the knot in the same neighbourhood ; 

 the thirty-feet seam of Miocene coal worked in Dis- 

 covery Harbour ; and the Eskimo relics at Cape 

 Beechey, near the eighty-second parallel, which, in 

 connection with the encampments on the opposite 

 coast, suggested that there, at the narrowest part of 

 Robeson Channel, had been a crossing place from shore 

 to shore. 



On the 31st of July, 1876, the Alert was again under 

 steam after her long rest, and one of the most dangerous 

 voyages on record began. The ships, of from five 

 hundred to six hundred tons, were handled as if they 

 were small tugs ; blocked, beset, pressed on shore, 

 Nares with consummate skill, constant watchfulness, 

 and never-failing patience, brought them through. But 

 they did not get out of Smith Sound until the 9th of 

 September, and then it was against head winds in 

 stormy weather amid icebergs innumerable that they 

 were slowly worked southwards and homewards. 



