234 Arctic and Antarctic Exploration [part i 
expeditions, whom I knew well in after years. He was 
born at Peterhead in 1802 and went to sea at the early 
age of ten, serving in several voyages to Davis Strait. 
He had been ten years at sea when he was wrecked in 
the Fury in 1825. He was with Parry in 1827, and was 
afterwards gunner of the Blossom. Abernethy was a very 
handsome man with a well-knit frame, and was resourceful 
and thoroughly reliable. The crew consisted of nine good 
men, and seven weak or useless hands. 
On July 5th, 1829, th e little Victory was off Cape 
Farewell. After a short stay at Holsteinborg she was 
very fortunate in passing through the ice of the middle 
pack, and it must have been with strange feelings that 
Captain Ross entered Lancaster Sound, and sailed over 
his Croker Mountains. The ship entered Prince Regent's 
Inlet, visited the beach where the Fury was wrecked, 
so well known in after years as "Fury Beach/' and sailed 
onwards to the south, hoping for an opening westward. 
Upwards of two hundred miles of previously unknown 
coast-line were thus revealed. Captain Ross gave to this new 
land the name of Boothia Felix, in honour of his generous 
friend who fitted out the expedition, and ultimately the 
Victory was established in winter quarters in "Felix 
Harbour" on the coast of Boothia in latitude 69 0 59' N. 
It was not until January, 1830, that Eskimos were met 
with. Their dwellings, w T hich they could build in 45 
minutes, were circular domes of snow, 10 feet in diameter, 
entered by a long passage. Light was given to the in- 
terior by an oval piece of clear ice, half-way up the dome. 
The stone lamp was fed with oil and moss, and the 
cooking-dish was also of stone. They used canoes for 
fishing in the summer, and a very remarkable kind of 
sledge in the winter, drawn by dogs. To construct this a 
number of salmon are packed together into a cylinder 
7 feet long and wrapped up in skins well corded with 
thongs. Two of these cylinders are pressed into the shape 
of runners, and left to freeze. Cross-bars made of the 
legs of deer or musk oxen are then fixed across, and the 
bottom of the runner is covered with a mixture of mossy 
earth and water, which freezes to the depth of two inches. 
The icy surface is then made smooth so as to run easily 
over the snow. 
