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412 were filled with large quantities of blubber, which smelt very disagreeably to our fastidious senses. Many articles that must have been brought from the camp of the 'Polaris' people were scattered around, such as a pillow, a sailor's blue cloth jacket enveloping putrid seal-meat, a single canvas boot, pieces of bar- iron, an iron saucepan, an ice-chisel marked "U.S.," part of a volume of one of the early Arctic voyages, a number of the 'Sunday Magazine,' dated September 1st, 1865, and many other relics of civilization. Several arrows were found ; one 1 brought away had the shaft made of deal, tipped with two feathers, and an iron barb neatly let into a brass stem. Many bones and antlers of Reindeer lay around, also bones of the Walrus. Hundreds of the sterna of Mergulus alle showed that these birds formed no inconsiderable part of the subsistence of the natives at certain seasons. The stems of Cassiope tetragona had been used as fuel, and considerable quantities of this plant were stored away in dry clefts of the rock- A dog-sledge that we found, made entirely of bone most ingeniously fastened together with thongs of hide, was a marvel of strength and elasticity ; the runners were made of pieces of walrus-tusk. At various spots along the shore of the fiord are sites of ancient residences; these have fallen in, and are now only noticeable by the extra green of the mounds. Immense quantities of bones are scattered round these spots, with many fragments of bone- implements.

There appears to be a general impression that the tribe of Eskimo inhabiting the belt of coast-line between Melville Hay and the Humboldt Glacier is rapidly dying off', and before long will be extinct. Kane,* referring to these people as he found them in 1854 and 1855, describes them as—

"A simple-minded people, for whom it seems to be decreed that the year must very soon cease to renew its changes. It pains me when I think of their approaching destiny, — in the region of night and winter, where the earth yields no fruit and the waters are locked, — without the resorts of skill or even the rude materials of art, and walled in from the world by barriers of ice without an outlet. The narrow belt subjected to their nomadic range cannot be less than six hundred miles long, and throughout this extent of country every man knows every man. I have a census, exactly confirmed by three separate informants, which enables me to count by name about one hundred and forty souls, scattered along from Kosoak, the Great River

'Arctic Explorations,' vol. ii., pp. 210, 211.