The Musk-ox 91 



hunters in the field continually for the purpose of securing 

 fresh meat for the crews, sending white sailors in charge of 

 dog sleds to visit the Eskimo camps to bring in the meat. It 

 is not uncommon for these sleds to go one hundred and fifty 

 to two hundred miles for meat, and all the mountains to the 

 north and west of Herschel Island have been visited many 

 times by these hunters and sledding parties, without obtaining 

 any trace of musk-ox. ColUnson, who wintered near Camden 

 Bay in 1853-54, does not mention the musk-ox. The U. S. 

 Government Survey party, which wintered on the Porcupine 

 several years ago and visited Rampart House, a Hudson Bay 

 trading post at the Ramparts on the Porcupine River, and who 

 went from there with Mr. John Firth, the Hudson Bay Com- 

 pany's trader, north through these mountains to the Arctic 

 Coast and returned, did not find musk-ox. Several white 

 men have travelled back and forth through these mountains 

 from Fort Yukon, on the Yukon River, to Herschel Island, for 

 the purpose of securing sled dogs of the Eskimo on the Arctic 

 Coast, to be used on the Yukon, without securing or learn- 

 ing anything of the musk-ox. Mr. Hodgson and Mr. Firth, 

 both in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, have been 

 stationed at Fort Yukon at the mouth of the Porcupine, at 

 Rampart House on the Porcupine, and at Lapierres House on 

 Bell River, a tributary of the Porcupine, during a period of 

 over thirty years, trading with the Loucheaux Indians, several 

 tribes of which hunt north of these places into the mountains 

 mentioned, without ever obtaining any knowledge of the exist- 

 ence of musk-ox ; and the Hudson Bay Company have never 

 secured at any of these posts any skins of the musk-ox. 



Previous to the advent of the whalers on this coast, the 

 coast Eskimo also traded at these Hudson Bay posts. The 

 country between the Porcupine River and the Arctic Coast, in 

 which district the mountains above mentioned are situated, is 

 entirely accessible from the north or south, and every part of it 



