DESERTED VILLAGE. 07 



broken bow, a flint arrow, and knife, with a 1824. 

 coarsely-constructed spear, and some frag- August. 

 ments of skin and walrus flesh. These articles 

 may probably have been the property of some 

 man who lay buried near the pile, but I could 

 discover no grave. Not far from this, and 

 near a very small hut, built of peat, was a 

 large inverted cooking-pot, composed of thin 

 slabs of lime-stone, very clumsily cemented 

 together ; and beneath it was a flint knife, a 

 piece of ivory, and a short splinter of decayed 

 drift wood. Some sledge runners, of the 

 whale's jaw, lay buried beneath a few large 

 stones ; and as they were quite black with 

 soot, it is probable they had answered the pur- 

 pose of roof-rafters to some winter-hut. Se- 

 veral other long spars of bone were lying 

 round in the same smoky state ; and as no 

 wood is procured in this desolate region, they 

 may be considered as the store timber of the 

 poor Esquimaux. Eight or ten double piles of 

 stones, for the purpose of supporting canoes, 

 were erected along the beach ; and farther in- 

 land stood six large bone, or Avinter, huts, in a 

 very dirty delapidated state; and as mosses 

 and grasses were growing on their seats and 

 sleeping places, they must have been long for- 

 saken. Of the immense quantity of bones 



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