Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/169

150 rapidly toward the island. Around us was high land, white with its winter dress, and beneath, an immense forest of sea vegetation, over which we sailed. We soon reached the shore, and I immediately landed to examine the place as well as the short time at my disposal would permit.

I soon came across an excavation, which was probably the commencement of a mine dug by Frobisher, though the Innuits, judging only from what they saw, called it a reservoir for fresh water, a quantity of which collected in it at certain seasons. This excavation was at some distance from the ruins of the stone houses, and was eighty-eight feet long and six feet deep.

On the shore of the north side of the island I found also an

ONE OF FROBISHER'S GOLD MINES, CALLED BY THE NATIVES SHIP'S TRENCH. excavation which I called a ship's trench, for the Innuits said that was where a ship had been built by the white men. It had been dug out of stone, which was of such a nature as to yield to the persevering use of pickaxe, sledge-hammer, and the crow-bar. The bottom of the trench, which was one hundred and ten feet in length, was an inclined plane, running from the surface of the ground to a depth of twenty-five feet at the water's edge.

On the top of the island I found the ruins of a house, which had been built of stone, cemented together with lime and sand.