happily it
then took place; and the "Pioneer" (having some days before left the
"Resolute," to cruise off Possession Bay) entered Pond's Bay, running
up the northern shore towards a place called Button Point.

The "West Land," as this side of Baffin's Bay is called, strikes all
seamen, after struggling through the icy region of Melville Bay, as
being verdant and comparatively genial. We all thought so, and feasted
our eyes on valleys, which, in our now humbled taste, were voted
beautiful,--at any rate there were signs and symptoms of verdure; and
as we steered close along the coast, green and russet colours were
detected and pointed out with delight. The bay was calm and glassy, and
the sun to the west, sweeping along a water horizon, showed pretty
plainly that Pond's Bay, like a good many more miscalled bays of this
region, was nothing more than the bell-shaped mouth to some long fiord
or strait.

One of my ice-quartermasters, a highly intelligent seaman, assured me
he had been in a whale-boat up this very inlet, until they conjectured
themselves to be fast approaching Admiralty Inlet; the country there
improved much in appearance, and in one place they found abundance of
natives, deer, and grass as high as his knees. I landed with a boat's
crew on Button Point. The natives had retired into the interior to kill
deer and salmon: this they are in the habit of doing every season when
the land ice breaks up. Numerous unroofed winter habitations and
carefully secured _caches_ of seal-blubber proved that they had been
here in some numbers, and would return to winter after the ice had
again formed in the bay, and the seals began to appear, upon which the
existence of the Esquimaux depends.

On first landing we had been startled by observing numerous cairns,
standing generally in pairs: these we pulled down one after the other,
and examined without finding any thing in them; and it was only the
accidental discovery by one of the men of a seal-blubber _cache_,
which showed that the cairns were merely marks by which the Esquimaux,
on their return in the winter, could detect their stores.

[Headnote: _LANCASTER SOUND._]

The winter abode of these Esquimaux appeared to be sunk from three to
four feet below the level of the ground: a ring of stones, a few feet
high, were all the vestiges we saw. No doubt they completed the
habitation by building a house of snow of the usual dome shape over the
stones and sunken floor. Having