Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/308

Rh this bay, the advanced season had made ice-travelling so precarious that I was forced to confine my labours to the survey of that part of the bay south of Allen's Island, and I commenced a renewed examination of the place. A short distance from where we had our third encampment, which was on the south end of Allen's Island, I saw the ruins of an old Innuit village, which showed a custom of the people in former times of building their winter houses or huts underground. Circles of earth and stones, and skeleton bones of huge whales were to be seen, as also subterranean passages. There were, moreover, bones of seals and other animals beneath sods and moss, indicative of their great age. I discovered with my spy-glass two monuments at the distance of about a mile inland, and thither I directed my steps. They were seven or eight feet high, four feet square at the base, and about three fathoms distant from each other. The top of one had been torn or blown down. The stones of which they were composed were covered with black moss. They were erected by the Innuits evidently ages ago. My record of the succeeding day commences thus:— "Thursday, June 26th, 1862.—I much desired to continue my trip up to the extreme of this bay, but, on consulting freely with my Innuit companion, I found that my better policy was to give up the idea of doing so. It would take some three or four days to go up and return, allowing the loss of one or two days, bad weather, as Ebierbing said, and in that time the probability of losing our chance to return on the ice with our sledge and instruments; besides, Ebierbing said that Ugarng had told him that there would be great risks to run in going up the channel on either side of Allen's Island on account of thin ice and tide-holes." On the morning of the above day we commenced our return to the vessel. I omitted nothing on my way back that I could do in the way of making observations for completing my chart. Our fourth encampment was near the north end of Williams's Peninsula.