A BREAK-DOWN. 



527 



usual, a seal was seen ahead. In an instant the dogs, which 

 were very hungry, bounded off at a rate of not less than twelve 

 miles an hour. The seal, frightened, made a plunge down into 

 its hole ; the dogs, flying onward so furiously, passed it, but the 

 wind, carrying the smell of the seal to their noses, made them turn 

 sharply round in a second. The consequence was that the sledge- 

 runner caught in the snow-crust, and sent me heels over head 

 off the sledge, to which my Innuit companions clung with all 

 their might. The runners of this sledge were twelve feet long, 

 and the left one was split from stem to stern ; but, though this 

 was a serious disaster, yet no considerable regret was manifested 

 on the part of the natives. Koojesse and Sharkey immediately 

 * set to work with their seal-spears, and succeeded in mortising 

 three holes in the lower half of the runner in the short space of 

 time that it took me to write the pencil notes recording the inci- 

 dent. It was not long before the runner was strapped together, 

 and we were again on our way down on the western side of the 

 large island which we passed in the morning, I hoping not to see 

 another seal that day. It was 10 P.M. when we arrived at the 

 south end of the Kikitukjua — Augustus Island, as I called it — 

 and made our fourteenth encampment. We had traveled forty 

 miles that day after leaving the thirteenth encampment, which 

 was on a small island not far from the east side of Augustus Isl- 

 and. We slept soundly, though our couch was the bare rock. 

 On the morning of the 12th, when .we awoke, we found ourselves 

 beneath a snow-drift — that is to say, some eight or ten inches of 

 snow had fallen during the night, giving us a clean, warm cover- 

 let. The weather being unpropitious for traveling, we remained at 

 the same place during the day. The following day, May 13th, at 

 10 A.M., we resumed our journey, passing along down by the coast 

 of Becher Peninsula,* on the west side of the inlet, directing our 

 course toward Mary's Island, the place of the twentieth encamp- 

 ment of my boat expedition the previous fall. We had not pro- 

 ceeded far on our way when a smart breeze from the northwest 

 sprung up, and before we had made half the distance to Mary's 

 Island it increased to a gale, accompanied with pelting drift. I 

 know not that I ever experienced more disagreeable traveling 

 than on this occasion. The snow flew furiously, eddying around 

 our heads, and dropping down into our laps as we sat upon the 



* The land between Ward's Inlet and the main Bay of Frobisher I thus named 

 after Captain A. B. Becher, R.N., of London, England. See Chart. 



