CHAPTER V.

UPERNAVIK.

HE broad waters of Baffin's Bay were at length entered, and the vessel was steered for the little settlement of

Upernavik, where Captain Webb intended to hire a couple of native sledge-drivers and three or four teams of the rough, hardy Greenland dogs. All the crew looked eagerly for this opportunity of a run ashore, having seen land only at some distance since they had sailed from the Tay.

Rounding a long curve of the precipitous coast, they stood into the inlet at the head of which the village is situated, and which is enclosed by cliffs of less height, in the clefts of which many sea-birds have their nesting-places. Black guillemots stood motionless on the rocks; black-headed divers pursued their finny prey in the green waves; auks nestled in holes in the cliffs; and turnstones waded

along the shore, seeking for food in the manner from which they have received their name.

The snow had disappeared along the shores of the inlet, though the distant mountains still wore their white winter covering. There were no signs of cultivation, however, and few of vegetation, which seemed to be confined to grasses and mosses, with here and there a bush of juniper.

As the crew let go an anchor, and the vessel was arrested in her progress up the inlet, several men came off from the beach before the village in canoes, which they paddled swiftly towards the ship. In answer to Captain Webb's inquiries, they informed him that there were plenty of dogs in the village, an assertion which was abundantly confirmed by the loud, hoarse barking of the animals as the boats, in which were the skipper, Markham, our two lads, and several of the crew, were pulled towards the landing-place.

The village was a group of wooden houses, irregularly dotting the sloping shore of the inlet, with their fronts at various angles to each other, and all having high roofs, like many old farmhouses in England. All the inhabitants seemed to have gathered on the beach to look at the visitors from the far country with which that of the ancestors of many of them was so intimately connected, and the barking of the numerous dogs gra

dually ceased, as the animals saw that their owners received the English mariners in a friendly manner.

"Where is the head man of this place?" inquired Captain Webb of a man who had addressed a few words of imperfect English to him.

The Dane indicated a fair-haired young man, well dressed in garments of thick blue woollen, trimmed with fur, and wearing an eagle's feather in his seal-skin cap. This man was approaching from the best house in the village, and had probably lingered behind the rest to adorn his fair locks with his best cap.

To this individual Captain Webb lifted his cap, and directed his inquiries for sledge-drivers and dogs. The young Dane courteously returned his salutation, and invited him to his house, where, over a glass of brandy and a pipe, arrangements were made for the services of a couple of converted Esquimaux, named Christian and Hans, and as many dogs as were likely to be required.

While Captain Webb was thus engaged, Markham and our two lads strolled along the beach, and at a little distance from the village saw a turnstone and several sanderlings wading in the shallow pools left by the receding tide, and auks and divers skimming the green waves that chased each other up the inlet, and rolled up the shingle with a melancholy and unceasing sound.

"Look at that bird," said Charlie, pointing to a sea-bird of dull plumage that was sitting among some fragments of rock, and did not move on their approach. "Can it be wounded, like the gull I once picked up on the shore, that it does not fly away?"

"I dare say it has an egg under it," observed Markham. “I have heard that some of the birds of northern seas will, when sitting, allow themselves to be taken, rather than leave their eggs."

"I will see," said Charlie, leaping over some pieces of rock, and making his way towards the sitting bird, which snapped its bill and uttered a hoarse cry, without changing its position.

Placing a hand over each wing, he lifted it up, and perceived a single white egg, faintly tinged with blue, and slightly veined and spotted with reddish brown. His first impulse was to appropriate the egg as a curiosity, but he refrained, and carefully replaced the bird, which had formed no nest for its reception.

"Is it a habit common to sea-birds to make no nest, and produce only a single egg?" he inquired of Willie, who had followed him to the spot.

"Many of them deposit their eggs on the shingle or sand, like that bird," replied the young sailor; "others scrape a hole to receive them, and some make a loose, untidy nest of sea-weed; but none of

them make such a nest as land-birds build. The divers and skuas lay two eggs; the guillemots only one, except the black guillemot, which lays two; the shags and gannets five or six; the terns and gulls seldom more than three; and the shearwaters and Mother Carey's chickens only one."

Continuing their walk along the beach, they came to a gap, which they ascended to the level of the cliff summit, which was there not very high. Hearing a singular cry, like that of some large wild fowl, they all looked in the direction of the sound, and saw a turnstone running through the grass and moss towards a juniper bush.

"Another nest, I'll bet!" exclaimed Willie Webb, running after the bird, which again uttered its peculiar cry, and, flapping its brown wings, flew seaward.

Charlie followed, and they soon found four eggs of an olive-green colour, spotted and streaked with various shades of a reddish brown. They were lying upon a bed of the dead leaves of the juniper, under a low branch of the shrub, which would have effectually concealed them from observation if the presence of the bird had not led to a search for them.

Charlie took one of the eggs for preservation in a collection of natural curiosities of the Arctic regions which he had determined to form, and then