DOGS — IMPLEMENTS — DREDGING. 289 



with troups of dogs, but they were not savage, being mainly pure 

 Newfoundland and a race of large Indian dogs. Several of these 

 dogs were brought home by various parties on board, and have 

 since thrived well, excepting the two Indian hunting dogs, pure 

 breed, which, I understand, have since died. A peculiarity of these 

 dogs is said to be the fact, that they will gorge themselves, and 

 carry food for a long time in their stomachs untouched by the gastric 

 Juice, disgorging it from time to time for their young. One man 

 affirmed that he had known them to keep food in this way for two 

 days, throwing it up in the apparently perfect condition of fresh 

 meat, upon which young puffins fed greedily. 



Our men returned to the vessel loaded with spears, bows and 

 arrows, komatik whips, sealskin boots and mittens, and several 

 finely spotted skins. One of the party procured the tusks of a young 

 walrus, two of these animals having been killed by the natives the 

 previous winter. They told me here that this animal though occa- 

 sionally seen about this part of the coast was rarely captured. 

 Upon inquiring I found that no white bears had been seen here for 

 several years. 



Across the harbor lies Battle Island, on the eastern side of which 

 is Battle Harbor. It is a village of about fifty houses, and a place of 

 much importance upon the coast. A mail steamer calls every fort- 

 night and returns directly to St. Johns. It is a fishing community, 

 and does not differ much from the settlements at Red Bay or Blanc 

 Sablon. 



We did some good work at Fox Harbor dredging, and this 

 was the only place where we found squids, although they doubtless 

 occur more or less abundantly at nearly or quite every harbor. 

 Another peculiarity of our finds here was the immense number 

 of small Crustacea, sandfleas and worms, that were everywhere 

 abundant under rocks and in pools of water wherever we 

 searched for them. Here, too, as at other places, we dredged sev- 

 eral Terebratula, but found them generally rare. One of our 

 party secured a most beautiful and magnificent large salmon trout 

 nearly two feet long. 

 19 



