We removed the stones that had fallen into the building, but found nothing to repay our labour; indeed, from the quantity of moss adhering to the walls, and filling up the interstices of the masses which formed the edifice, I conjectured it was many years since it was constructed, though it would be impossible to guess when it was last inhabited; for, at Pond's Bay, I observed the remains of the native habitations to have the appearance of extreme old age and long abandonment, although, from the fresh seal-blubber _caches_, there was not a doubt of the Esquimaux having been there the previous winter. A mile beyond this ruin we halted for the night. Four of us (for, in Arctic travelling, officer and man are united by the common bond of labour) erected the tent over a space which we had cleared of the larger and rougher pieces of limestone, leaving what was called a soft spot as our castle and bedroom. One man, who dubbed himself cook for the day, with a mate, whose turn it would be to superintend the kitchen on the morrow, proceeded to cook the dinner. The cooking apparatus was a boat's stove, eighteen inches long, and nine inches broad, in which lignum vitae was used as fuel. Water having first to be made from ice and snow, and then boiled in the open air, the process was not an expeditious one, and I took my gun and struck inland; whilst Mr. May, in an opposite direction, made for a point of land to the westward. [Headnote: _A WINTER'S EVENING._] No pen can tell of the unredeemed loneliness of an October evening in this part of the polar world: the monotonous, rounded outline of the adjacent hills, as well as the flat, unmeaning valleys, were of one uniform colour, either deadly white with snow or striped with brown where too steep for the winter mantle as yet to find a holding ground. You felt pity for the shivering blade of grass, which, at your feet, was already drooping under the cold and icy hand that would press it down to mother earth for nine long months. Talk of "antres vast and deserts idle,"--talk of the sadness awakened in the wanderer's bosom by the lone scenes, be it even by the cursed waters of Judea, or afflicted lands of Assyria,--give me, I say, death in any one of them, with the good sun and a bright heaven to whisper hope, rather than the solitary horrors of such scenes as these. The very wind scorned courtesy to such a repulsive landscape, and as the stones rattled down the slope of a ravine before the blast, it only recalled dead men's bones, and motion in a catacomb. A truce, however, to such thoughts--May's merry recognition breaks the stillness of the frosty air. He has been to the point, and finds it an island; he says--and I vow he means what he says--that May Island is a beautiful spot! it has grass and moss upon it, and traces of game: next year he intends to bag many a hare there. Sanguine feelings are infectious; I forget my own impressions, adopt