MAMMALIA OF N. GREENLAND AND GRINNELL LAND. 315 
were numerous, and I came across fragments of the skeleton of one 
cetacean. Patches of green moss marked the sites of ancient 
habitations, and circles of stones summer tents, whilst numerous 
stone “caches” and cooking-places, now overgrown with moss and 
lichen, but containing calcined bones, bore silent witness to the 
former presence of inhabitants. At various points of Grinnell Land, 
still further north, notably at Cape Hilgard, Cape Louis Napoleon, 
Cape Hayes and Cape Fraser, I came across old traces of Eskimo. 
At Radmore Harbour, in 80° 25’ N. lat., I found the ruins of another 
large settlement, apparently as long deserted as the one on Norman 
Lockyer Island. After removing the green moss and overturning 
some of the large stones that had once formed the walls of the 
“igloos,” I discovered several interesting ivory relics. On Bellot 
Island, at the entrance of Discovery Bay, 81° 44’ N. lat., were 
several rings of lichen-covered stones that marked the sites of old 
encampments, fragments of bone and chips of drift-wood being 
strewn around. A few miles south of Cape Beechey I found more 
circles of tent-stones; and near at hand a small heap of rock- 
crystals and flakes showed where the artificers in stone had been 
making arrow or harpoon heads. Close under Cape Beechey, and 
about six or seven miles from the eighty-second parallel, I came 
across the most northern traces of man that have yet been found; 
they consisted of the frame-work of a large wooden sledge, a stone 
lamp in good preservation, and a very perfect snow-scraper made 
out of a walrus-tusk. Taking into consideration that where I 
found these relics is at the narrowest part of Robeson Channel, 
not more than thirteen miles across, and that a few miles to the 
south, near Cape Lupton, on the opposite shore of Hall Land, the 
‘Polaris’ Expedition found traces of summer encampments, I am 
inclined to believe that this must have been the spot selected for 
crossing over the channel, and, owing probably to the difficult and 
dangerous nature of the ice to be encountered, the heavy sledge 
and impedimenta had been left behind. It may perhaps have 
marked the ultima thule of human advance, and of a cruel destiny 
that forced poor beings to render up their lives at the altar of 
discovery, under the light of the midnight sun. This thought 
crossed my mind as I came across these relics, and human imagi- 
nation can scarcely depict a spot more wild or more weird than 
that I then gazed on, or one more befitting the enactment of such 
a tragedy. Northwards from this point no trace of man was 
