"And now, having proven this much, I shall return to Boston, repair the schooner, get a small steamer, and come back as early next spring as I can. The schooner I will leave at Port Foulke; and, remaining there only long enough to see the machinery set in motion for starting the hunt, collecting the Esquimaux, and establishing the discipline of the colony, I will seek Cape Isabella, and thence steam northward by the route already designated. If I cannot reach the open sea in one season, I may the next; in any event, I shall always have at Port Foulke a productive source of food and furs, and a vessel to carry them to Cape Isabella, upon which I may fall back; and if I need dogs, they will be reared at the colony in any numbers that may be required. Besides, if in this exploration I should be deficient in means, and the expedition should be hereafter left entirely to its own resources, a sufficient profit may be made out of the colony in oils, furs, walrus ivory, eider down, etc., to pay at least a very considerable proportion of the wages of the employés, beside subsisting them. The whole region around Port Foulke is teeming with animal life, and one good hunter could feed twenty mouths. Both my winter and summer experience proves the correctness of this opinion. The sea abounds in walrus, seal, narwhal, and white whale; the land in reindeer and foxes; the islands and the cliffs, in summer, swarm with birds; and the ice is the roaming-ground of the bears." Thus much for the future; let me now come back to the present. Inglefield has very correctly exhibited the expansion of Smith Sound, as I have had most excellent opportunity for observing, both in my passage over, and from Cape Isabella. He has placed some of the capes too far north, and his local attraction, probably, has caused a slight error in the axis of the Sound. His Victoria Head is the eastern cape of my Bache Island, and his Cape Albert is the eastern cape of Henry Island. [Sidenote: CAPE ISABELLA.] The view up the Sound from Cape Isabella was truly magnificent. The dark, wall-sided coast, rendered more dark in appearance by the contrast with the immense cloak of whiteness that lay above it, was relieved by numerous glaciers, which pour through the valleys to the sea. The _mer de glace_ is of great extent, and, rising much more rapidly and being more broken, gives a picturesque effect not belonging to the Greenland side, and adds much to the grandeur of its appearance. The mountains are lofty, and are everywhere uniformly covered with ice and snow; and the glacier streams which descend to the sea convey the impression almost as if there had once been a vast lake on the mountain-top, from which the overflowing waters, pouring down every valley, had been suddenly congealed.