-party coming back, two or three hours after, laden with eggs
and brant geese, awoke me. Wade was sweating profusely beneath the
boards and moss. We took care not to wake him till near eight o'clock,
evening; when he got up, considerably better.

The next day (July 26) was spent in the manufacture of salt; not the
manufacture of it exactly, either, but the extraction of it from
sea-water. We were getting perfectly frantic for salt. The fresh food
sickened us. I think we should soon have been really ill from the want
of it. Filling the hollow in the ledge with the sea-water, we first
tried to get fire enough about it to make the water boil. This we
found it impossible to do, and so had recourse to a plan suggested by
Kit. It was to get eight or ten stones about the size of the tin
bumper, and heat them in the fire. When red-hot, these were
successively rolled into the water in the hollow, raising great clouds
of steam, and soon causing it to boil furiously. Continuing this
stone-heating process for three or four hours, we succeeded in
boiling away fully half a dozen pailfuls of water. There was then
found to be a thin stratum of salt deposited along the bottom of the
hollow. How we crowded around it, wetting the ends of our fingers, and
licking it up! Eggs were then fried by the dozen, and eaten with a
relish that only salt can give. I should add, however, that this
appeared to me to be a very poor quality of salt; or else it had other
mineral matter mixed with it, giving it a slightly bitter taste.

The quantity obtained at this our first boiling was so small, that we
ate it all that night, and with our breakfast next morning.

The next forenoon was passed boiling down a second vatful. Wade and I
attended to the salt-making, while the rest of the party went off to
the islet next to the west after eggs and game. In the evening we
provided ourselves with fresh "shake-downs" of moss and the tea-plant.

The 28th was devoted by Raed, Kit, and Donovan to a trip down to the
mainland on the south. Raed wanted to see what sort of a country it
was, with a view to our attempt at going down to Nain in case "The
Curlew" should not come back. They did not get back till nine in the
evening. They had found the hills and mountains along the coast to be
mere barren ridges of lichen-clad rock, with moss-beds in the
hollows. But from the summit of the high ridge, about two miles in
from the shore, they had seen with the glass, to the so