Our flag waved from the highest point of King William Land throughout the day following, which we were altogether too patriotic to forget was Independence Day. After firing a national salute from our rifles and shotguns our day's work was resumed. Henry and Frank were sent to explore the two points further along the coast, while Lieutenant Schwatka and I searched the vicinity of the camp and about a mile inland. It was a dismal, foggy day, but we derived great comfort from occasional glimpses of our country's flag through the lifting fog, the only inspiriting sight in this desolate wilderness--a region that fully illustrates "the abomination of desolation" spoken of by Jeremiah the prophet. The next day Lieutenant Schwatka went further inland, Frank and Henry down the coast, and I took Toolooah, with the sled, and went around the point toward Cape Sidney, keeping well out on the ice, to see if any cairn might have been erected to attract attention from that direction. On the way we stopped and took down a cairn that I had seen on the day of our arrival. We found nothing in it, though, the earth beneath it being soft, we dug far down in the hope of finding something to account for its existence, as Toolooah believed, though he was not certain, that it was a white man's cairn. I did not go as far as Cape Sidney, which had been my intention, as a thick fog, which came up as we left the cairn, rendered the trip useless for the purpose intended, as we could only get occasional glimpses of the shore, and could not see inland at all. Lieutenant Schwatka found a well-built cairn or pillar seven feet high, on a high hill about two miles back from the coast, and took it down very carefully without meeting with any record or mark whatever. It was on a very prominent hill, from which could plainly be seen the trend of the coast on both the eastern and western shores, and would most certainly have attracted the attention of any vessels following in the route of the 'Erebus' and 'Terror', though hidden by intervening hills from those walking along the coast. The next day Frank, Toolooah, and I went with Lieutenant Schwatka to take another look in the vicinity of the cairn, and to see if, with a spy-glass, we could discover any other cairn looking from that hill, but without success. It seemed unfortunate that probably the only cairn left standing on King William Land, built by the hands of white men, should have had no record left in it, as there it might have been well preserved. When satisfied that no document had been left there, the inference was that it had been erected in the pursuit of the scientific work of the expedition, or that it had been used in alignment with some other object to watch the drift of the ships. Before leaving we rebuilt the cairn, and deposited in it a record of the work of the Franklin search party to date. CHAPTER IX. ARCTIC COSTUMES.