it at our most easterly Labrador station,
and we were to keep telling her our position. The boat was in charge
of Mr. John Rowland and Mr. Robert English, both of Yale. It created
quite a furor among the passengers on our great ship, when she stopped
in mid-ocean, as it appeared to them, and lowered an erratic doctor
over the side on to a midget, whose mast-tops one looked down upon
from the liner's rail. The sensation was all the more marked as we
disappeared over the rail clinging to two large pots of geraniums--an
importation which we regarded as very much worth while.

With an old Hudson Bay man, Mr. George Ford, to act as interpreter,
and a Harvard colleague, who to his infinite chagrin was recalled by a
wireless from his parents almost before starting, the little ship and
her crew of three disappeared "over the edge" beyond communication. I
should mention that the Company had promised an engineer for the
launch, but he had begged off when he understood the nature of the
projected expedition; so Yale decided that they were men enough to do
without any outside help.

September had nearly gone, and no news had come from the boys. I owe
some one an infinite debt for a temperament which does not go halfway
to meet troubles; but even I was a little worried when unkind rumours
that we had sold a boat that was not safe were capped by a father's
letter to say that he "had heard the reports"! Fortunately, two days
later, as the Strathcona lay taking on whale meat for winter dog food
at the northernmost factory, the Northern mail steamer came in. On
board were our returned wanderers, and papa, who had gone down as far
as the Labrador steamer runs to look for them, as proud and happy as a
man has a right to be over sons who do things. The boys had not only
reached Baffin's Land, but had explored over a hundred miles of its
uncharted coast-line, crossed to Cape Wolstenholme, navigated
Stupart's Bay--northeast of Ungava--and finally returned to Baffin's
Land, coming back to Cartwright on the Hudson Bay Company's steamer
Pelican. It was a splendid record, especially when we remember the
fierce currents and tremendous rise and fall of tides in that distant
land. This latter was so great that having anchored one night in three
fathoms of water in what appeared to be a good harbour, they had
awakened in the morning to the fact that they were in a pond a full
mile in the country, left stranded by the retiring tide.

Our last "hot