26 NEAREST THE POLE 



bergs, but a closer approach in every case showed 

 winding passages among them, and off Kangerdlook- 

 soah there were comparatively few. 



Here, where I had left my faithful people three years 

 before, I found now six tents, the occupants of all but 

 one of them young and active men. The number of 

 dogs, and the goodly supply of skins which these people 

 have, made the process of moving a little slower than 

 at some of the other places, but everybody and every- 

 thing was finally on board, leaving the place, which 

 a few hours before had been enlivened by the voices 

 of children and the barking of dogs, deserted. From 

 Kangerdlooksoah we steamed north across the head 

 of the Gulf to Harvard Islands, on the northernmost 

 of which were four tents. These, like the others, 

 were embarked as soon as possible, and at half-past 

 two the morning of the nth, the Erik was ready to 

 steam down the Gulf again. 



The scene and the surroundings during this typical 

 Arctic summer night were such as to be long remem- 

 bered. The surface of the Gulf like a placid mirror, 

 thiekly dotted in every direction with fragments of 

 ice and icebergs, of all sizes and shapes, and flanked 

 on the east and north by the gigantic amphitheatre 

 of the Heilprin, Tracy, and Melville Glaciers rising 

 to the steel-blue slopes of the "great ice," while north- 

 west and west rose the warm red-brown bluffs of 

 Mounts Daly and Adams, and Josephine Peary Island, 

 and to the south the rolling slopes of the Kangerd- 

 looksoah deer pastures. During the remainder of the 

 night we steamed down the Gulf, and in the forenoon 

 we were on the walrus grounds between Herbert 

 Island and the north shore of the Sound. 



