now resolved to demolish them every one in the same
manner, which I accomplished without the least difficulty; for although
they saw their companions fall, they had no suspicion of either the
cause or the effect. When they all lay dead before me, I felt myself a
second Samson, having slain my thousands.

To make short of the story, I went back to the ship, and borrowed three
parts of the crew to assist me in skinning them, and carrying the hams
on board, which we did in a few hours, and loaded the ship with them. As
to the other parts of the animals, they were thrown into the sea, though
I doubt not but the whole would eat as well as the legs, were they
properly cured.

As soon as we returned I sent some of the hams, in the captain's name,
to the Lords of Admiralty, others to the Lords of the Treasury, some to
the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London, a few to each of the trading
companies, and the remainder to my particular friends, from all of
whom I received warm thanks; but from the city I was honoured with
substantial notice, viz., an invitation to dine at Guildhall annually on
Lord Mayor's day.

The bear-skins I sent to the Empress of Russia, to clothe her majesty
and her court in the winter, for which she wrote me a letter of thanks
with her own hand, and sent it by an ambassador extraordinary, inviting
me to share the honours of her crown; but as I never was ambitious of
royal dignity, I declined her majesty's favour in the politest terms.
The same ambassador had orders to wait and bring my answer to her
majesty _personally_, upon which business he was absent about three
months: her majesty's reply convinced me of the strength of her
affections, and the dignity of her mind; her late indisposition was
entirely owing (as she, kind creature! was pleased to express herself in
a late conversation with the Prince Dolgoroucki) to my cruelty. What the
sex see in me I cannot conceive, but the Empress is not the only female
sovereign who has offered me her hand.

Some people have very illiberally reported that Captain Phipps did
not proceed as far as he might have done upon that expedition. Here it
becomes my duty to acquit him; our ship was in a very proper trim till
I loaded it with such an immense quantity of bear-skins and hams, after
which it would have been madness to have attempted to proceed further,
as we were now scarcely able to combat a brisk gale, much less those
mountains of ice which lay in the higher