Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/395

Rh ice, with eleven and twelve fathoms' water; and then there appeared green sloping hills and large islands, the favourite resort of reindeer. This, after a short interval of sand, was in its turn succeeded (at Point Grant) by a large tract of shingle and limestone. It was here that the traces of Esquimaux became frequent. Not a point nor an island could we land upon but exhibited old caches, camping-places, or graves. One of their tent sites—an oval—measured twenty feet the longest way; and in another place we found several deposits of marrow-bones!

On the 10th we proceeded north-eastward all day among the islands, and some began to apprehend that we had lost the continent altogether, till in the evening we opened a strait, running in to the southward of east; whilst the rapid rush of the tide from that quarter left no longer any room to doubt the neighbourhood of an open sea, leading to the mouth of Back's Great Fish River. The ebb left on the sandy beach many little fish, which Ooligbuck called "Oonglak," and which, he said, are highly relished by the Churchill and Ungava Esquimaux, on whose coasts they are caught of a much larger size. In this strait too we saw the first salmon since crossing Coronation Gulph. They came from under a heavy mass of ice, behind which the men were resting on their