420 KESOURCES OF PORT FOULKE. 



schooner I will leave at Port Foalke ; and, remaining 

 there only long enough to see the machinery set in 

 motion for starting the hunt, collecting the Esqui- 

 maux, and establishing the discipline of the colony, I 

 will seek Cape Isabella, and thence steam northward 

 by the route already designated. If I cannot reach 

 the open sea in one season, I may the next ; in any 

 event, I shall always have at Port Foulke a produc- 

 tive source of food and furs, and a vessel to carry 

 them to Cape Isabella, upon which I may fall back ; 

 and if I need dogs, they will be reared at the colony 

 in any numbers that may be required. Besides, if in 

 this exploration I should be deficient in means, and 

 the expedition should be hereafter left entirely to its 

 own resources, a sufficient profit may be made out of 

 the colony in oils, furs, walrus ivory, eider down, etc., 

 to pay at least a very considerable proportion of the 

 wages of the employes, beside subsisting them. The 

 whole region around Port Foulke is teeming with 

 animal life, and one good hunter could feed twenty 

 mouths. Both my winter and summer experience 

 proves the correctness of this opinion. The sea 

 abounds in walrus, seal, narwhal, and white whale ; 

 the land in reindeer and foxes ; the islands and the 

 cliffs, in summer, swarm with birds ; and the ice is the 

 roaming-ground of the bears." 



Thus much for the future ; let me now come back 

 to the present. 



Inglefield has very correctly exhibited the expan- 

 sion of Smith Sound, as I have had most excellent 

 opportunity for observing, both in my passage over, 

 and from Cape Isabella. He has placed some of the 

 capes too far north, and his local attraction, probably, 



