184 ENGLISH VEBSUS AMERICAN. 



in honor of the day. Here I was, in a lonely out-of-the-way 

 region of the globe, midway between the temperate and the arc- 

 tic zones, and snowed and iced up, so to speak, from the rest 

 of the world ; to this, add the fact that I was upon EngHsh soil, 

 and you understand my feelings. I shall never forget in this 

 connection (though I mean no offence) a passage in one of Jules 

 Verne's works, in which he recounts a dispute upon the naming of 

 a point hitherto unreached in the unknown lands in the polar regions. 

 The parties were an Englishman and an American ; both had come 

 together unexpectedly in search, the one of the northwest passage, 

 the other, of the north pole ; the name of Cape Washington 

 was given by the American. The Englishman angrily asserted, 

 *' you might choose a name less offensive to an Englishman ;" to 

 which the other replied, proudly, " but not one which sounds so 

 sweet to an American." I am afraid that my English friends 

 shared a touch of this sentiment, at least the former part of it, as 

 I maintained the national honor of the occasion and fired a salute of 

 four guns to the memory of the day ; for, on coming to breakfast, 

 I was greeted with a sharp, "what's that for?" and an explanation 

 only elicited a shrug of the shoulders accompanied by an humph! 

 as if of no consequence to them and entirely unnecessary on my 

 part. 



After breakfast I prepared to carry out my scheme. It was 

 a fine morning, the air was cold and clear, scarcely any wind, 

 the roads in tolerably good condition as I supposed, and all 

 nature invited me forth. In return for the reception my patriot- 

 ism of the morning had received, I determined to pay my friends 

 by not telling them where 1 was going — having but one object 

 in view all the time ; many were their solicitations, but I was 

 firm. The dogs seemed unusually happy as they frisked about and 

 around me, and it seemed good to get out in the air ; so 

 putting on my rackets, with my gun in hand, I started off. At first 

 I had to walk on the level bay about a mile and a half to the head- 

 land on the left. The walking would have been called good by a 

 native Labradorian ; to me it was terrible, and I stumbled along 



