in the "direct road to preferment,"--twenty years of toil and misery
have I served to obtain it.

Considering myself, therefore, under no obligation to his Excellency,
I addressed a letter to the Directors, expressing my thanks for the
benefit they had conferred upon me, and requesting permission to visit
the land of my nativity next year.

I was fortunate enough to find a couple of canoes at Esquimaux Bay,
sufficiently large to admit of conveying an outfit to the interior,
and equally fortunate to find Mr. Davis, the gentleman in charge of
the district, possessed the will and ability to promote my views. All
my arrangements at this place being completed, I set off on my return,
and was happy to find, on my arrival at the outpost, that the outfit
was rendered in safety, not the slightest accident having occurred on
the way.

I arrived at Fort Chimo in the beginning of October. The dreary winter
setting in immediately, we commenced the usual course of vegetative
existence; and I consider it as unnecessary as it would be
uninteresting to say anything further concerning it than that this
season passed without our being subjected to such grievous privation
as during the last. The greater part of the people being distributed
among the outposts, reduced our expenditure of provisions so much,
that I felt I had nothing now to fear on the score of starvation; and
the precautions I had taken the preceding winter enabled us not only
to indulge occasionally in the _luxuries_ of bread-and-butter, but
also to contemplate the possibility of the non-arrival of the ship
without much anxiety.