118 Our North Land. 



There is a high board cross erected over the grave of Daniel 

 O'ConneU^who "died of consumption, Dec. 24, 1876." The tablet 

 gives no record of his age, but its form indicates the faith in which 

 he died ; and the fact that it was erected, so far as I can judge from 

 the other graves, by Protestants, indicates that, meeting death 

 calmly and deliberately, he made request concerning his burial and 

 the emblem of his church that so appropriately marks his last 

 resting place in this lonely spot. 



Of L the fourteen whose graves are marked by numbers, and 

 whose names and numbers are inscribed on the large wooden 

 monument, under the title of " Bark A. G. : crew " and " Bark 

 0. J. : crew," what shall I say ? Was it shipwreck that brought 

 them all to their graves, or was it disease, or were they all frozen to 

 death? I cannot tell. It makes one almost shudder to look upon the 

 little mounds of stones and read the only half intelligible inscription. 

 In their last hours there was great distress. They came to their 

 end in some awful calamity. That is enough. Let us turn away 

 from these graves, and hope that no friend of ours will have such 

 an end. 



About five o'clock in the afternoon I discovered on the gently 

 sloping rocks on the side of the narrows leading from the outer to 

 the inner harbour, a vast quantity of writing which had been execu- 

 ted with a small brush and black paint. It proved to be of consider- 

 able value in explaining, to some extent, how the victims of the 

 fourteen graves, of which a description has just been given, came to 

 their deaths. The inscription, " Bark A. G.," evidently meant the 

 barque "Ansel Gibbs;" for I was able to decipher from the writing on 

 the rock the following head-lines over about thirty names : " Survi- 

 vors of the crew of the barque Ansel Gibbs, wrecked on the 17th of 

 Oct., 1872." There were following about thirty names, but many 

 of them were so much obliterated that I found it impossible to make 

 a complete list. Near by was another list of those who had " died 

 from scurvy" during the winter following the loss of the vessel. 

 These names were mostly intelligible, and I was enabled to ascertain 

 that they were the same as the list already given the reader, quoted 

 from the wooden monument in the burial-ground. There were, how- 



