254 CAPTAIN CARTWRIGHT'S 



other cross-fox with my rifle, and tailed the three 

 traps which I struck up some time ago. Mr. Dau- 

 beny papered part of the roof of the house. 



Thursday, December 24, 1778. Mr. Daubeny 

 visited two of his traps and had the leg of a white- 

 gull,^ which had been eaten out by a fox. I went 

 to two of mine and shot a brace of ptarmigans. 

 This being Christmas Eve, I gave the people some 

 brandy as usual, and they all got very drunk, in 

 conformity to annual custom; which, I presume, 

 was first imported into Newfoundland from Ire- 

 land, and brought hither from thence. 



Severe frost with some drift. 



Thursday, January 21, 1779. I rested very in- 

 differently last night, and was much indisposed 

 all this day; occasioned by drinking too much 

 new spruce-beer j^esterday; and the fatigue of 

 the two last days; having walked full fourteen 

 miles each, without rackets; which caused me to 

 sink into the snow three or four inches in general; 

 frequently down to my knees, and sometimes to 

 my middle. Notwithstanding all this, and the 

 walking as fast as possible, some spruce-beer, 

 which I carried in an elastic bottle in my upper 

 waistcoat-pocket close to my ribs, froze so, as to 

 lose all fluidity. 



1 This was perhaps an ivory gull, Pagophila alba, a bird that comes to 

 Labrador with the winter and arctic ice, at the time when the kittiwakes • 

 and herring gulls are departing for the south. The Labrador men at the 

 present day call them " ice partridges " and shoot them as they hover 

 about seals' blood which has been poured on the ice to attract them. 

 Mrs. Holmes in the " Log of the Laura," p. 60, speaks of the-.shooting of 

 " snow grouse or ivory gulls " on the east coast of Greenland. 



