58 CRUISE of THE NEPTUNE 
inlet comprised thirty-five families, or one hundred and forty- 
four persons. The only other band on the northern shores 
of baffin island lived at Admiralty inlet, and does not exceed 
forty persons in all. Members of this band annually visit 
Ponds inlet to trade for the necessary supplies of ammunition, 
knives and other articles to be obtained from the whalers. At 
this time over one-half of the population of Ponds inlet were 
away inland to the southwest after a supply of deerskins for 
winter clothing;, and would not return before the snow fell. 
The deer country is free from snow during the summer, and 
consists partly of rolling country, with a few high hills, but 
principally of a plain, cut by many streams and dotted with 
numerous lakes, the deer feeding on the grass and shrubs which 
are plentiful in the interior. 
bylot island is everywhere high and rough, and supports few 
deer except in the northeastern interior. The ice-cap, seen 
everywhere from the coast, does not extend far inland, where 
much of the land is bare in summer. The natives of Ponds 
inlet frequently cross to Fox channel and Repulse bay. During 
the past winter a party returning from the latter place brought 
letters from the whaling station at repulse bay. They also 
occasionally cross to North Somerset, where of late years musk- 
oxen have been killed. This journey is at rare intervals con- 
tinued across Lancaster sound to North Devon, where many 
deer and musk-oxen are found along the western side, while 
bears and walrus are plentiful among the ice of Wellington 
channel. In the winter all congregate at Button point, where the 
early part of the season is spent in houses built half into the 
ground, the low walls being made of boulders and whalebones 
cemented together with clay and sods, the roof being a portion 
of the summer tent. The ordinary snowhouse is used, as in 
other places, after the snow falls and until the late spring. 
During the winter food is obtained by killing narwhals and 
occasional seals and walrus in the open water at the edge of the 
