MEDICAL TREATMENT. 163 



I was very glad to find that my sailing-master, 

 Mr. Wood, had devoted great attention to making a 

 collection of shells, fossils, gravels, and other geo- 

 logical specimens, a duty which I had devolved upon 

 him when we parted, and for the due performance 

 of which I had given him copious written as well 

 as oral instructions. 



I appropriated the ten fore quarters of venison 

 my crew had been kind enough to leave us, likewise 

 all the eider-ducks ^except twenty, and, instructing 

 Mr. Wood to go up Stour Fiord as far as the val- 

 leys where we had found reindeer the previous sea- 

 son, to kill as many as they could, and then meet us 

 at Hvalfiske Point on or before the 21st, we parted 

 company, and bore up once more for the walrus 

 districts to the northeast. 



Two of the "hands" in the sloop, one of whom 

 is the redoubted Solomon (harpooner, disrated for 

 incapacity, and since reinstated), have been ailing a 

 good deal for the last week or ten days, and I only 

 to-day discovered that Isaac, the skyppar, who has 

 charge of the medicaments, had, in his ignorance of 

 the Pharmacopoeia, been putting the two unfortu- 

 nate men through a course of chloride of lime ! A 

 jar of this had been sent from the chemist's, along 

 with the medicines, for the purpose of counteract- 

 ing the smell of the putrid blubber. It was fortu- 

 nate the mistake had been no worse, for there also 

 happened to be among the medical stores a jar of 

 arsenical soap for preserving skins, and our nauti- 



