Our home journey was almost wholly devoid of incident. Melville Bay, smooth as glass, had lost its terrors, and we steamed through it almost without hindrance. We reached Atanekerdluk, in the Waigatt, on August 29th, and there spent a delightful and profitable day in collecting fossils among the “leaf beds” which have been made famous to geologists. The following morning we arrived at Godhavn, where once more we enjoyed the kind hospitality of Inspector and Mrs. Anderssen, and the pleasing attentions of a daughter who had only recently returned from Denmark. The same friendly reception awaited us at Godthaab, the capital of the Southern Inspectorate of Greenland, where the honors of hospitality were divided between Inspector and Mrs. Fencker and Governor and Mrs. Baumann. It was here that Nansen descended from the ice-cap after his memorable journey across the Land of Desolation and passed a long, weary winter of waiting.
The Eskimos of this region have the reputation of being the most expert kayakers in the whole of Greenland, and we were witness to some of their most remarkable feats, such as describing a complete revolution through the water, and crossing one another at right angles, one canoe shooting over the bow of the other. These performances, which are said to have been at one time common with all the west-coast Eskimos, are rapidly becoming a lost art, and it has even been doubted if they took place at all.
Our kind friends were so pressing in their attentions that it was not without regret that we were forced to bid adieu to their hospitable homes and a last farewell to the Greenland shores. After a rather tempestuous voyage we arrived at St. John’s, Newfoundland, on September 11th, to find a scene of desolation, and wreck and ruin running in the path of the recent conflagration. The fire had broken out two days after the departure of the “Kite” on her last mission of good-will, and this was the first intimation that any of us had had of the catastrophe. Shaping our course southward, we arrived, after an uneventful voyage, at our port of destination, Philadelphia, where on the 24th, amid a chorus of cheers and hurrahs, and the tooting of innumerable horns and whistles, we received the congratulations of the multitude that had assembled to await our arrival.