The sea beneath me was a mottled sheet of white and dark patches, these latter being either soft decaying ice or places where the ice had wholly disappeared. These spots were heightened in intensity of shade and multiplied in size as they receded, until the belt of the water-sky blended them all together into one uniform color of dark blue. The old and solid floes (some a quarter of a mile, and others miles, across) and the massive ridges and wastes of hummocked ice which lay piled between them and around their margins, were the only parts of the sea which retained the whiteness and solidity of winter. I reserve to another chapter all discussion of the value of the observations which I made from this point. Suffice it here to say that all the evidences showed that I stood upon the shores of the Polar Basin, and that the broad ocean lay at my feet; that the land upon which I stood, culminating in the distant cape before me, was but a point of land projecting far into it, like the Ceverro Vostochnoi Noss of the opposite coast of Siberia; and that the little margin of ice which lined the shore was being steadily worn away; and within a month, the whole sea would be as free from ice as I had seen the north water of Baffin Bay,--interrupted only by a moving pack, drifting to and fro at the will of the winds and currents. To proceed further north was, of course, impossible. The crack which I have mentioned would, of itself, have prevented us from making the opposite land, and the ice outside the bay was even more decayed than inside. Several open patches were observed near the shore, and in one of these there was seen a flock of _Dovekie_. At several points during our march up Kennedy Channel I had observed their breeding-places, but I was not a little surprised to see the birds at this locality so early in the season. Several burgomaster-gulls flew over head, making their way northward, seeking the open water for their feeding grounds and summer haunts. Around these haunts of the birds there is never ice after the early days of June. [Sidenote: THE JOURNEY ENDED.] And now my journey was ended, and I had nothing to do but make my way back to Port Foulke. The advancing season, the rapidity with which the thaw was taking place, the certainty that the open water was eating into Smith Sound as well through Baffin Bay from the south, as through Kennedy Channel from the north, thus endangering my return across to the Greenland shore, warned me that I had lingered long enough. [Sidenote: PLANTING THE FLAG.] It now only remained for us to plant our flag in token of our discovery, and to deposit a record in proof of our presence. The flags[10] were tied to the whip-lash, and suspended between two tall rocks, and while we were building a cairn, they were allowed to flutter in the breeze; then, tearing a leaf from my note-book, I wrote on it as follows:--