OUR FIRST LANDINGS 57 
It pushed us up, so to say. As long as we had it well 
in hand we didn’t care. We still clung to the hope of 
a harbour, and harbour there was none on this side. 
If this ice was coming on, the northern ice might be 
going back. It seemed that we might yet find a way 
round by the north when that ice went up with the tide. 
We sailed as much as we could, saving our coal all we 
knew. But I had made up my mind on a point which, 
before I turned in, I unfolded to my companion. 
‘If,’ said I, ‘we can’t get round the north of the island, 
then I land to-morrow.’ 
Now will I enter upon considerations which I should 
not deem it necessary to give, were it not that, since my 
return to this country, I have been taken to task in 
more than one quarter for the ‘folly and rashness’ 
of committing another and myself to such uncertain 
chances as offered themselves upon the island. 
But the reader who reflects that we had the evidence 
of our eyes that there had been, if not lately, at any rate 
not very long since, persons on this island with their 
reindeer and their sleighs; that even if these people had 
crossed to the mainland they would be coming back 
again when the sea was clear; or else that some from 
the mainland would come to them—for nothing is more 
certain than that even Samoyeds would not long exist with- 
out flour and other necessaries of life ;—and finally, that we 
had come all the way with no other object but to inquire 
into this very country—the reader, I say, who reflecting 
