650 Newfoundland Adventures. JuNE, 



nately silent, and seemed under the influence of recollections that agi- 

 tated her violently. I endeavoured to cheer her, but she shook her head 

 and answered not. I asked if she were ill ? if she were sorry to return 

 to her tribe ? if I could yet do any thing for her comfort ? She at last 

 replied, in a tone of fearful energy, ' Nothing ! nothing !' indicative of 

 such determined self-reliance or self-abandonment, that I gave up the 

 attempt in utter hopelessness. 



" At last we entered the River of Exploits, and put ashore at the same 

 little rushy harbour near where the fight had occurred. I thought it 

 imprudent to excite her feelings by taking her thither again ; but a ge- 

 neral feeling of curiosity, in which she strongly participated, and our 

 anxiety to discover any late tracks of the wandering natives, with whom 

 we might now hope to open an intercourse under more favourable cir- 

 cumstances, led us on to the very ground where we left her husband un- 

 buried three years ago. Nothing now remained of the .slain Esquimaux, 

 but the spot was well marked by nature in the luxuriant herbage that 

 sprung from earth which had imbibed the life-blood of two human be- 

 ings. A small rock lay beside it, and further on a second, on Cabot's 

 grave. The moment Ursa reached that little patch of verdure in the 

 midst of barrenness, she became convulsed with feelings whose intensity 

 was too great for endurance. She struggled for utterance, and, bursting 

 into a loud and piteous scream, fell to the earth amongst us. We hastily 

 raised her, and supported her on the large stone, while one of the men 

 ran back for some water, which he brought in his hat ; but she could 

 not sit, she could not speak, she could not breathe ! that piercing cry 

 was the last sound she uttered. We felt her pulse, but not a single beat 

 was found : the cold water dashed in her face did not send one throb 

 back to her heart ; it was cold and motionless too, and we saw with 

 dismay that we held a corpse in our arms ! Simon stood aghast ! 



' D tion !' he exclaimed ; ( the bounty 's lost with her ! All '& gone ! 



Ben, Paul, Cabot, and all through these infernal savages !' He cocked 

 his gun, stepped up hastily on the rock, and looked long and steadily 

 around him, as if for some object on which to wreak his vengeance, or 

 by which to retrieve his loss : but nothing appeared in the distance ; and 

 declining to give us any further aid, he went and sat in silence on the 

 stone of Cabot's grave. 



" We bore the body back to the boat, and soon after Simon slowly 

 joined us. We returned hither immediately, and next day deposited 

 poor Ursa's remains in the churchyard, in a grave which happened to be 

 dug close to the spot where we laid those of Ben and Paul three years 

 ago. Simon exclaimed strenuously against the profanation of burying 

 a heathen like her in consecrated ground, and beside them, the victims 

 of her husband's ferocity. I tried the argument of Christian charity 

 with him : in vain. He said that Ursa was ' neither a Christian or a 

 neighbour/ and was positive she had no claim to charity from us. A 

 hint, however, of the probability of the admiral's displeasure, and the 

 total withdrawal of the bounty in consequence, silenced him at last. 



" Immediately on my return, I wrote to St. John's, and received in 

 answer from the admiral a singular account of the termination of the 

 expedition to restore to their tribes the two native women who had been 

 educated under his own eye. On reaching the place in their route across 

 the island where they had both been taken prisoners about two years ago, 

 one of them fell dead! (what a strange coincidence !) and the other ob- 



