On the 1st of June, 1818, they had reached the eastern side of Davis’s Strait, but detained by ice, and it was not till the 3rd of the following month that they arrived at the Women’s Islands. The delay did not prevent them from having some pleasant intercourse with the Danes and Esquimaux of the Greenland settlements. Extempore balls were organised, where their interpreter, Jack Sackhouse (or Saccheous), was of great value. Jack combined in his person the somewhat discordant qualifications of seaman, interpreter, draughtsman, and master of ceremonies, with those of a fisher of seals and a successful hunter of white bears. A favourable breeze sprang up, and Ross was anxious to leave, as the ice began to separate. Jack had gone ashore, and when a boat was sent for him he was found in one of the huts with his collar-bone broken, from having greatly overloaded and discharged his gun. His idea was, as he expressed it, “Plenty powder, plenty kill!” Proceeding northward, and passing many whalers, he examined and named Melville Bay. On August 10th, the ships being at anchor near shore, eight sledges of Esquimaux were observed, and Saccheous was despatched with a flag and some presents in order to parley with them, they being on one side of a field of ice, in which was a canal or chasm. After much shouting and gesticulating, Saccheous held out his presents, and called to them in their own language to approach. The reply was “No, no; go away!” and one man said, “Go away; I can kill you!” holding up a knife. The interpreter, however, threw them an English knife, which they accepted, and _pulled their noses_, which Ross represents to mean a sign of friendship. They soon became more familiar, and pointing to the ships, asked, “What great creatures these are. Do they come from the sun or the moon? Do they give us light by day or by night?” To which Saccheous replied, “They are houses made of wood.” The natives would not believe this, answering, “No, they are alive; we have seen them move their wings.” Ross entitles these natives the “Arctic Highlanders.” There is a good deal of rather doubtful matter in the narrative of Ross, and it is certainly more than likely that these people had often seen whale-ships. [Illustration: FISKERNÆS, SOUTH GREENLAND.] Not far from Cape Dudley Digges Ross observed some of the cliffs covered with the _crimson_ snow often mentioned in other Arctic narratives, and indeed noted by Saussure in the Alps. “This snow,” he says, “was penetrated even down to the rock, in many places to a depth of ten or twelve feet, by colouring matter.” Some of this having been bottled, was analysed on their return by Mr. Brande, the celebrated chemist, who, detecting uric acid, pronounced it to be no other than the excrement of birds. Other authorities considered it to be of vegetable origin, judging it to be probably the drainage from some particular kind of moss, the roots of which are of that colour.