STRAWBERRY HARBOR. I9I 



deftly climbs up over the rail hand-over-hand, and then 

 we take aboard the kayak. 



Whether the little box of a harbor we svvunsf in was. 

 called Strawberry* because it was but little larger than 

 that berry, history does not record ; but it was the queer- 

 est of the queer harbors we had entered, and by this 

 time the monotony of leaving one harbor in the morn- 

 ing and entering its counterfeit presentment the same 

 evening had been a matter of remark by the grumblers 

 aboard. There was not room enough to swing by our 

 cable, so we made fast to the rocks ashore, which rose 

 in cHfifs reaching nearly to our topmasts. Another ves- 

 sel shared these narrow quarters with us. She had had 

 tolerably good luck in fishing, her hole being packed two 

 or three feet deep with codfish. 



Deep and seemingly inaccessible to outside Ufe as 

 Strawberry Harbor promised to be, the next day, which 

 was nearly calm and sunny, with a little breeze from the 

 east, the mosquitoes, swarming from land and peering 

 over into our den, swooped down upon us and made life 

 miserable. Ashore with my insect-net, they fairly drove 

 me off the hunting-ground, which proved to be richer in 

 arctic insect life than any yet experienced. 



So with the plants, showing that this spot was warmer 

 and more protected than any harbor we had visited for 

 the past two weeks. In the gulches and ravines the 

 mountain-ash, alder, and willows grew to the enormous 

 height of three feet ; the white spruce-trees were perhaps 

 twenty-five feet high and one foot in diameter near the 

 ground. This species of Abies, called in Maine the " cat"^ 



* This harbor is very near Ford's Bight or Nisbet's Harbor, and about ten 

 miles from Anderson's house, 16 on the map of Eskimo Bay. 



