Memoirs of Lieutenant Joseph Renbe Bellot; With His Journal of a Voyage in the Polar Seas, in Search of Sir John Franklin Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855 edition. Excerpt: ... lands which have been taken from them. The majority of them exchange these gifts for rum, and the company then trades in them to procure skins. All means are taken, and that, too, with the co-operation1 of the mother country, to retain the monopoly of skins and furs in the hands of the company, and keep up the prices. When it is seen that the hunting is too productive, it is prohibited; or at least the company refuses to buy of the Indians, which comes to the same thing. 2nd July.--Icy rain; the thermometer at 33. The rapid way we make northward, and some isolated blocks of ice make us think that we are not far from the great ice. We steer eastward, in order to approach the land. This morning I perceived, from the steadiness of the vessel, that we must be among the ice; in fact, we are surrounded on all sides by great masses of ice which shelter us from the sea, which is hardly wrinkled, - The thermometer Bellot refers to in this journal 19 always that of Fahrenheit. very different from that of yesterday evening. It rains melted hail. A fog prevents our seeing far, and we lie to, giving way from time to time to double an ice-block. At five o'clock Mr. Kennedy calls me on deck to show me something, the nature of which he cannot make out. I run out on the mizen boom, and am as much puzzled as those below at seeing a blackish block, which at first I take to be a dead whale. From the form, it seems to me to be stones; but if it were a bank of rocks the sea would break upon it. We pass along it, and find it is a mass of ice covered with stones and gravel; it is frozen mud from some creek of a freshwater ravine. At six o'clock we pass within half a stone's throw of a pretty large stream. The different pieces composing it are joined together, but...