12 MUSEUM BULLETIN NO. 6. 



are from the Alaskan coast, they and the Siberian goods must 

 have had an even start thence for the east, and there is little 

 doubt any metal articles would have outstripped them, for when 

 one gets east of Bathurst one who brings pots from the west is 

 carrying coal to Newcastle. 



Between Herschel island and Cape Bathurst there do not 

 seem ever to have been regular trading expeditions. As above 

 pointed out, the Mackenzie delta and the vicinity were so much 

 one community that there was promiscuous visiting back and 

 forth at most seasons. Within this section the products and 

 resources of one locality were so nearly identical with those of 

 any other that the trading must have consisted chiefly in the 

 westerners passing Alaskan wares east and the easterners pass- 

 ing eastern wares west. 



From Cape Parry there were two trading routes to the east. 

 The one, whose existence is to be inferred from the map, lay east 

 along the mainland coast. The intercourse along this route has 

 been completely forgotten by the people of Baillie island, who 

 indeed, no doubt, seldom went farther east than Horton river 

 they themselves say they did not. The continuous chain of 

 ruined houses, graves, and such signs of travel as broken sleds, 

 paddles, etc., that connects Cape Bathurst with Cape Bexley is 

 in itself proof enough that there was such traffic; besides, the 

 easterners have not forgotten it, though the westerners have. 



The second, less self-evident trade route led north from 

 Cape Parry across the restless, never solidly frozen sea that 

 separates the mainland from Banks island. The traffic here was 

 carried on exclusively by the westerners at least, so the Cape 

 Bathurst people say. This accounts for the breaking off of the 

 intercourse as soon as the westerners began to trade with the 

 Hudson's Bay Company the easterners did not know the route, 

 and were afraid of the westerners, as the Rae River people were 

 in Richardson's day and as they and all their neighbours still are. 

 The Cape Bexley people dread the half-forgotten westerners 

 with whom they once traded almost as much as the (to them) 

 semi-fabulous Indians. 



What the Cape Bathurst people traded east chiefly were the 

 articles they had bought from the west; what they chiefly re- 



