moss, adorn the hill-sides, and many flowers unknown to warmer zones come bravely forth to flourish for a few weeks only, and wither in the August winds. Very few of the flowers, so refreshing and charming to the eye, have any perfume. Nearly all smell of the dank moss that forms their bed. As soon as the snow leaves the ground, the hill-sides in many localities are covered with the vine that bears a small black berry (called by the natives parwong,) in appearance, though not in flavor, like the huckleberry. It has a pungent spicy tartness that is very acceptable after a long diet of meat alone, and the natives, when they find these vines, stop every other pursuit for the blissful moments of cramming their stomachs with the fruit. This is kept up, if the crop only lasts long enough until they have made themselves thoroughly sick by their hoggishness. But the craving for some sort of vegetable diet is irresistible, and with true Inuit improvidence they indulge it, careless of consequences. Fortunate for them is it that their summer, is a short one, and the parwong not abundant, or cholera might be added to the other dangers of Arctic residence. But the days of the buttercup and the daisy, and of the butterfly and the mosquito are few. With the winter comes the all-pervading snow, and the keen, bracing north-west wind, the rosy cheek and the frozen nose; but with it also comes rugged health and a steady diet of walrus meat. CHAPTER VII. RELICS. From this point onward our march was attended with the most profitable results. On the evening of the 4th of June we met a young man, named Adlekok, who, during the previous summer, had found a new cairn erected by white men near Pfeffer River, which had never been seen by any other Inuits. Near by were three graves and a tent place in which he found a pair of wire-gauze snow-goggles, which we bought from him. This information seemed of sufficient importance to be followed up immediately before any other natives should find and rob the cairn. Consequently the next day Lieutenant Schwatka and I took a light sled, with Toolooah to drive and Adlekok as guide, and visited the spot. We took a day's rations with us, to use in case we did not get back that night, and started with a head wind and storm that confined our view to the immediate vicinity of the sledge. Our guide, however, took us through this trackless waste of smooth ice, a distance of over twenty-five miles, without deviation from the direct line, with no landmarks or sun to steer by; but on he went with the unerring instinct of a dog, until we struck the land at the western banks of Pfeffer River. Arrived at the cairn we found it as he said, "a white man's cairn" unmistakably, but before proceeding to take it down we examined it carefully and found scratched on a clay stone with the point of a sharp instrument, MAY H XII 1869 and on the opposite side, ETERNAL HONOR TO THE DISCOVER- ERS OF THE NORTH WE-