486 
CONCLUSION. 
and could hardly have been blowing long. They ha.r- 
nessed in their dogs, urged them to their utmost speed, 
and made for the land they had left. Too late ! a 
yawning chasm of open water lay already between. 
A day was lost in frantic despair. It blew a gale, an 
offshore southeaster. The fog rose, the wind still from 
the east: the shore was gone. 
The story is a wild one. They reharnessed the dogs, 
and turned to the west, one hundred and thirty track- 
less miles of ice before them. On the third day the 
dogs gave out : one of the lost men killed his fellow, 
and revived the animals with his flesh. The wretch- 
ed survivor at last reached the North American shore 
about Merchant's Bay. Years afterward, this account 
came over by a circuitous channel to the Greenland 
settlement. He had married a new wife, had a new 
family, a new home, a new country, from which, had 
he desired it never so much, there could be for him 
no return. 
The traditions of all the settlements have tales of 
similar disaster. Yet the Esquimaux are a happy race 
of people, happy so far as content and an elastic tem- 
perament go to make up happiness. 
I should like to dilate for a while on some of their 
superstitions, which crop out now and then through 
their adopted faith, as if to show the Scandinavi:;in 
mythology it overlays. I have the materials by me, 
too, for some passages about their seemingly innate 
fondness for music, their roundelays and hymns, the 
little organ at Holsteinberg, which has come back from 
Denmark repaired since Sir John Ross's visit, the vio- 
lins of the church orchestra, and the abominably it- 
crated accordions, with their ki adred Jews-harps. I 
