116 Our North Land. 



in the Welcome," on the 5th of Sept., 1874, commemorating the 

 six whose names I have given. Here was a key unlocking a most 

 thrilling piece of history. The record of the last days of these men 

 of the Abbie Bradford's larboard boat was forced upon me unaided 

 by the imagination. They were " lost in the Welcome." Now 

 this " Welcome " is Row's Welcome, a body of water lying in the 

 extreme north-west portion of Hudson's Bay, a strait, really, leading 

 from Hudson's Bay into the Frozen Strait that further leads easterly 

 "into the northern part of Fox Channel. It is a large sheet of water, 

 known now as the " American whaling ground." Standing by this 

 grave I can see the Abbie Bradford far up in the troubled waters of 

 Row's Welcome. The look-out-man has discovered a whale from 

 the crow's nest at the foretop. He descends, takes his place at the 

 helm of the larboard boat, which has been let down and manned, 

 ready for the chase. The course is given and four men, bending 

 to the oars, a fifth at the swivel-gun, and the helmsman, making up 

 the doomed six, they speed away. On and on, rising and falling 

 with the swell, turning this way and that, to avoid the floating ice. 

 At length the monster of the seas rises, it may be, but fifty or sixty 

 yards from their boat, and blows the water with tremendous power. 

 Turning the gun upon him, the harpoon is discharged into his fat, 

 oily side. Down he plunges ! But to rise again, perhaps nearer 

 than before. And now, we cannot tell, but it is not improbable, he 

 turns his mighty tail with a well-directed, irresistible blow towards 

 the boat, smashing it to pieces, or sending it high into the air to fall 

 again emptied of its contents. However it may have occurred, it is 

 useless now to conjecture. There are so many ways in which death 

 and destruction could overtake a frail boat in the Welcome, that to 

 speculate as to the particular manner in which these six men were 

 precipitated into eternity, is needless. One thing we know, they went 

 down into the cold waters of Row's Welcome to rise no more until 

 the seas shall give up their dead. There is but little now to per- 

 petuate their memory, save it be the aches of broken-hearted 

 .widows and mothers and sisters, in the bereaved New England 

 homes which were darkened by their death. But their noble-hearted 

 comrades, who had fellowshipped with them in the hardships of 



