considerable distance from the ships, and the Inuits proposed to lie
down on the snow until daylight, as they could not see and did not know
the route. I was afraid to stop moving, and proposed to keep walking in
the direction of the harbor. All who came ashore, therefore, started
with us; but the road at last became so difficult that I felt it
necessary to rest quite often, wearied as I already was by previous
hardships.

The route chosen by our guide was to follow the shore ice around until
the harbor was reached. This was a very circuitous and dangerous road,
as in the darkness one would frequently pitch headlong over a steep
precipice upon the snow beneath. My trousers were so stiff that I could
not bend my knee or lift my foot high enough to clear ordinary
impediments, and I fell very often. It was fortunate for me that I
never fell upon the shore ice beneath the cliff, for in many places it
was very deep, and I could not see where I trod. When I commenced
falling I never knew where I would alight, though I usually brought up
in some friendly snow-drift. At last all the Inuits grew so impatient
to reach the ships that they left Henry and me to find our way as best
we could, and pushed on as rapidly as their better vision and greater
familiarity with the country would permit. In half an hour from the
time they left us they had reached the harbor; but with their
accustomed indifference to the comfort of others they failed to
say that two "kodlunars" (white men) were still out upon the
island--one of them too weak and frozen to keep up with them. As soon
as the officers learned the fact from them, Captain Barry despatched
"Domino," one of the natives with his ship, to find us and bring us
to the vessel. We saw a lantern which he carried, and, coming down from
the cliff upon the smooth ice, were overjoyed to find ourselves in the
harbor and but a few hundred yards from the ships. We shouted at the