“On the second day out,” says one who took part in the expedition, “the boats reached Blossom Shoals, and there spied the rescue vessels lying five miles out from the shore and behind a long tongue of ice that stretched like a great peninsula ten miles farther down the coast. Around this point they were obliged to pull before they could get aboard. The wind blew a gale, the sea threatened the little crafts with instant annihilation, but still the hazardous journey must be performed, and there was no time to be lost in setting about it. The boats started on their almost hopeless voyage, the women and children stifling their fears as best they could. On rounding this tongue of ice, they encountered the full force of the southwest gale, and a sea that would have made the stoutest ship tremble. In this fearful sea the whaleboats were tossed about like corks. They shipped quantities of water from every wave that struck them, and all hands bailing could hardly keep them afloat. Everybody was soaked with freezing brine, and all the bread and flour aboard was spoiled. The strength of the gale was such that the Arctic, after getting her portion of the refugees aboard, parted her cable and lost her port anchor, but brought up again with the starboard one, which held until the little fleet was ready to sail. By the second day all were distributed among the seven vessels, from two to three hundred souls each,—a total of 1219 refugees. They set sail, and reached Honolulu in safety.” Thirty-four staunch vessels were thus abandoned to their fate, and only one, The Minerva, was released in safety the next summer from the grip of the frost king. More than a million dollars was abandoned to the ice and the Eskimos, and ruin brought home to many a fine old New Bedford shipping concern. The sullen winter set in. The ice closed rigidly about the doomed ships scattered along the coast from Point Belcher to Blossom Shoals, and a wild carnival of loot began for the natives of the north coast. News seems to spread in strange ways in the Arctic. The Eskimo tells much, yet he learns more by the observation of his fellows. Most of all, however, he seems to have an instinct which is more subtle still; and the tribes learned the news in all these ways. To the place of great riches traveled all who had the means of travel. From the bleak coast east to the mouth of the Mackenzie, from the sandy peninsula of Point Hope and from points between, each community saw another pack up and move, and hitched up their dogs and followed, knowing well that the prize for such a journey at such a time of year must be great, else it would not be attempted. By the time the winter sun ceases to rise in the southward, but merely lights the southern sky with a rosy glow at what should be noon, three thousand Eskimos had assembled and begun to build the greatest Eskimo village known to history.