[Illustration: _Ah-ni-ghi´-to on the Site of the Little Black House_]
Good-bye was said to all the Eskimos, with promises of a return some day, and the ship started for home.
This had been a very unusual summer. Much snow had fallen, and many storms took the place of the usual sunshine. The natives laid all this to the removing of the iron mountain, and told AH-NI-GHI´-TO’S father, when they bade him good-bye, that they feared they would never see him again, for they were sure the ship, with all on board, would go to the bottom of the sea.
They were very much distressed, and begged him to put the stone ashore here, and thus avoid the ill luck which would surely befall him. He tried to assure them that the ship would reach home safely, but they seemed very sad when the vessel steamed away.
For a time it seemed as if the weather had united with the evil spirit which the Eskimos had said protected the iron stones, and the wind and sea together tried their best to set free the great meteorite by pounding it through the ship’s sides or turning the vessel over.
But the good ship withstood all their attacks, and finally the stormy wind became a favoring breeze and smoothed the tumbling waves into a smiling sea.
AH-NI-GHI´-TO was now bound for home, and the vessel steamed steadily toward the south, stopping at one point to take on board a party of gentlemen who had spent the summer studying the rocks and ice rivers. Still farther south, another stop was made to gather fossils. AH-NI-GHI´-TO’S father took her with him to the fossil-beds, as the scientific men called the hillside where the fossils were to be found, and showed her the flat shaly stones which when split open had pictures of leaves and twigs upon the inner surface. He told her that many, many years ago, it was always summer in this spot where now it was always winter; that the ground on which she stood was then covered with ferns and flowers instead of snow and ice; and that, just as she had seen her mother press the flowers she had gathered, in the sunny places among the rocks, between the leaves of books to preserve them that she might show them to friends at home, so these ferns and leaves of long, long ago had been pressed, by the wind and rain, between sheets of mud which have turned to stone, so that the learned men who were now opening these stone books, or fossils, with their hammers could see what kind of plants and trees grew then in this country.