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II 



WALRUS-SHOOTING IN WHALE SOUND 



ONE day early in August, 1899, ^ dense white mist settled 

 over the cold, black waters of ice-floe-spotted Whale Sound, 

 and forced the steam barkentine sealer Diana, relief ship to 

 Lieutenant Peary, to recall, by means of her siren, three whale- 

 boats in the midst of an exciting walrus-hunt. The vessel then 

 steamed up to an enormous flat pan of ice covering several 

 acres, was flrmly fastened to it by means of the three-pronged 

 ice-anchor, and, with steam up in case of emergency, drifted 

 slowly northward into the fog with its white neighbor. 



Twelve hours later,. when the fog lifted, the surroundings in- 

 dicated that vessel and pan had drifted about twenty miles 

 northward with the current. Several miles to the eastward 

 Cape Alexander, on the Greenland coast, loomed up through 

 the vanishing mists, while to the westward, across the com- 

 paratively open waters of Smith Sound, two prominent head- 

 lands in Ellesmereland, Capes Isabella and Sabine, were barely 

 visible in the distance. The Diana slowly swung around and 

 steamed southward, along the Greenland coast, with lookouts 

 aloft searching the ice-floes ahead with telescopes for sight 

 of the walrus herds which were to furnish Lieutenant Peary 

 with food for his dog-teams during the approaching winter. 



The coast of Greenland presented a grand but desolate sight. 

 The eye encountered huge, red granite headlands and cliffs cut 

 into fantastic shapes by the relentless Arctic elements; miles 

 of glacier front, from which masses of ice were continually break- 



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