ROUTE OF SIBERIAN EMIGRANTS. 109 



taken a long course of years, is that it has no sufficient outlet, and 

 that it goes on accumulating from year to year. It must then 



lie in a virtually land-locked sea, and this of course implies land to 

 the north, as well as to the east, south, and west. Captain Cook 

 supposed there must he land to the north, from having observed 

 great flocks of ducks and geese flying south in September. Dr. 

 Simpson tells us that the natives of Point Harrow have a tradition 

 that there is land far away to the northward, and that some of 

 their people once reached it. It was a hilly country, inhabited bj 

 men like themselves, and called Ljlun-niuta. 1 Here, then, is my 

 bridge by which the Omoki, Tunguses, and Onkilon passed over 

 from the frozen tundra of Siberia to the no less inhospitable 

 shores of Prince Patrick's Island, to those of the head of Wellington 

 Channel and Baffin's Bay, and far into the unknown region. The 

 theory of Eskimo migration is thus illustrated by facts in physical 

 geography. 



On Melville and Banks Islands, and near Northumberland Sound, 

 we meet with the same ruined ijonr's of stone and earth, the same 

 stone fox-traps, and the same bones of whales and other animals as 

 were seen by Wrangell at the mouth of the Indigirka. These traces 

 were met with by the Arctic expeditions all along the shores of the 

 Parry group, from Prince Patrick's Island to Lancaster Sound, a 

 distance of 540 miles. They were of great antiquity, and had evi- 

 dently not been occupied for centuries. McClintock found the ruts 

 made by Parry's cart, and was led by their appearance, after more 

 than forty years, to assign a very high antiquity to the Eskimo 

 remains. He says, "No lichens have grown upon the upturned 

 stones, and even their deep beds in the soil where they had rested 

 ere Parry's men removed them are generally distinct. The astonish- 

 ing freshness of these traces compels us to assign a very considerable 

 antiquity to the Eskimo remains which we find scattered along the 

 shores of the Parry group, since they are always moss-covered, and 

 often indistinct." * I myself carefully examined several of these 

 traces of the wanderers, and was equally impressed with their great 

 age. I have here collected a list of the principal remains that have 

 been observed along this weary line of march : s — 



1. The remains of huts were found hy M'Clure on the north-wesl 

 coast of Banks Island. 



2. On Melville Island Parry found the ruins of six huts, 6 feet 

 in diameter by 2 feet high, on the south .shore of Liddon'a Gulf. 

 Similar remains were found on Dealy Island, and at the entrance 



1 'Blue Book,' p. 917. 2 Ibid, p. 582. (Further papers, 1855.) 



' Maikhuiu'.i 'Franklin's Footsteps,' p. 115. 



