20 
GUI' heads proclaimed their anxiety for the safety of their young, evidently 
not far off. At intervals we heard the wild deep toned and mournful 
cry of the red-throated diver, rising from some adjacent lake, music to the ears 
of us lone wanderers, in the dearth of life and sound around us. We saw one 
large flock of ducks only, going south. At 11.30 a.m. crossed an elbow of the 
low shores, forming a considerable convexity in the bay, from which a deep 
curve ran up beyond it ; bounded on the west by a low black point, covered with 
broken up fragments of limestone, faced with the scarlet lichen, and abundantly 
fossiliferous, more especially in corallines, of which I collected some specimens. 
Here we became enveloped in a thick fog, which, with snow, continued till we 
reached our old encampment. At 2 p.m. crossed a patch of loose dark sand, 
and the sledge party rested for a few minutes near a rapid stream, after 
crossing which, the sledge soon came upon its outward track of yesterday. Saw 
three or four sandpipers, and wounded an Arctic gull ; which, falling somewhere 
in a dark shingle water course, about a quarter of a mile from where I shot it, I 
lost, after making a considerable detour from the sledge's course in search of it, 
for I have not yet been able to obtain a specimen of this solitary bird, mostly 
met with singly, or in pairs ; and of which we have seen only three or four 
individuals throughout our journey; all very shy and Avary. On coming up 
with the sledge, we were drawing near the Black Mount, and I proceeded on 
ahead of my party to see if all was right. Reached the boat and cache at 4 p.m. 
in the midst of a snow storm, with the wind at N.W. Found everything as we 
left them, with the exception of the gratifying sight of open water in the cove ; 
all the ice having been driven out during our absence, by the southerly winds, 
which blew for a few hours, leaving only a narrow belt of loose sludge near the 
beach, and no impediment in the way of getting to sea in the boat. It was just 
low w^ater, and the large urn shaped masses of ice were left high and dry in 
hollows in the bed of shingle which they had made for themselves, in the ebb 
and flow of the tides, and to the repeated action of which they owe their hour- 
glass form. On the arrival of the sledge, we pitched the tent on the old spot. 
A large flock of ducks alighted in the bay this evening. 
Sunday 29th. — We did not rise until 8 a.m. This is the finest morning that 
we have experienced since leaving the ship ; and all our clothing and beddmg 
being so saturated with moisture, as to prevent any of us from sleeping last 
night, I took advantage of the favourable change in the weather to have every- 
thing spread outside the tent to dry. Being Sunday, I determined to make it a 
day of rest to recruit the exhausted energies of my men, before we commenced 
our homeward voyage. All still feeling more or less the effects of the fatigue 
attending their unremitting exertions for the last two days ; one evincing a 
slight disposition to snow blindness, and another some dental irritation. 
After they had all had the great comfort of an ablution and shave, I read 
part of the morning service to them in the tent. Our dinner, as yesterday, 
consisted of a warm mess of preserved mutton, soup and potatoes, with Burton 
ale. Wind round to the westward, breaking up the winter's floe in the inlet, 
west of the encampment, and which was rapidly drifting out past us. The rise 
and fall of tide here is considerable, some six feet, probably. The wind this 
evening shifted to the N.W., with a fall of snow in large flakes. Night overcast 
and misty, with a black looking horizon to the northward. We turned in at 
9 P.M. 
