Lost and Found.

 

There is a particular spot in those wild regions which lie somewhere near the northern parts of Baffin’s Bay, where Nature seems to have set up her workshop for the manufacture of icebergs¹, where Polar bears, in company with seals and Greenland whales, are wont² to gambol³, and where the family of Jack⁴ Frost may be said to have taken permanent possession of the land.

 

One winter day, in the early part of the eighteenth century, a solitary⁵ man might have been seen in that neighbourhood, travelling on foot over the frozen sea in a staggering, stumbling, hurried manner, as if his powers, though not his will, were exhausted⁶.

 

The man’s hairy garb⁷ of grey sealskin might have suggested that he was a denizen⁸ of those northern wilds, had not the colour of his face, his brown locks, and his bushy beard, betokened⁹ him a native of a very different region.

 

Although possessing a broad and stalwart frame, his movements indicated, as we have said, excessive weakness. A morsel¹⁰ of ice in his path, that would have been no impediment even to a child, caused him to stumble. Recovering himself, with an evidently painful effort, he continued to advance with quick, yet wavering steps. There was, however, a strange mixture of determination with his feebleness. Energy and despair seemed to be conjoined in his look and action—and no wonder, for Red Rooney, although brave and

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