entertainers, but I cannot say I enjoyed it.
We left camp at a quarter past one o'clock the following day, our
starting having to conform somewhat to the state of the tide, as at
high tide we cannot reach the ice. The sledging was simply awful, and
poor Toolooah was having a hard time of it and without a murmur or
discontented look. I expected he would urge us to abridge our search,
as there seemed to be imminent danger of the ice breaking up. But he
constantly told us to go on and search as much as we thought necessary,
and leave the sledging to him; he would do the best he could. It was a
pleasure to see him do it so cheerfully. There is something reassuring
even in the tone in which he addresses the dogs. Many a time we have
started to go through a place that seemed absolutely impassable until I
heard that cheery cry, "Why-ah-woo-ha-hu-ah!" and saw him bend his own
shoulder to the task. It seemed all right then. Even the dogs were more
hopeful, and pulled with renewed energy.
We found the coast on the south side of Erebus Bay cut into long,
narrow points, separated by deep inlets, that made the work of
searching much greater. All along the shore at the bottom of the
inlets, we found pieces of navy blue cloth, which seemed to have been
washed up by high tides. Quantities of driftwood also were seen; but we
already had as much on the sled as, in the present condition of the
ice, we could carry. At the bottom of one of the deepest inlets or
bays, the men found the wreck of a ship's boat strewn along the beach,
together with pieces of cloth, iron, canvas, and human bones. We
gathered together portions of four skeletons, a number of buttons, some
fish lines, copper and iron bolts and rivets, the drag rope of a sled,
some sheet-lead, some shot, bullets, and wire cartridges, pieces of
clothing, broken medicine bottles, the charger of a powder-flask, an
iron lantern, and a quantity of miscellaneous articles that would
naturally form part of the outfit of such an expedition. The bones were
prepared for burial, and the relics gathered together in a pile, from
which to select a few to take away with us. The prow and stern-post of
the boat were in good condition, and a few clinkered boards still hung
together, which measured twenty-eight feet and six inches to where they
were broken off at each end, showing it to have been a very large boat.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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