412 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
were filled with large quantities of blubber, which smelt very 
disagreeably to our fastidious senses. Many articles that must 
have been brought from the camp of the ‘ Polaris’ people were 
scattered around, such as a pillow, a sailor’s blue cloth jacket 
enveloping putrid seal-meat, a single canyas boot, pieces of bar- 
irop, an iron saucepan, an ice-chisel marked “U.S.,” part of a 
volume of one of the early Arctic voyages, a number of the ‘ Sunday 
Magazine, dated September Ist, 1865, and many other relics of 
civilization. Several arrows were found; one J brought away had 
the shaft made of deal, tipped with two feathers, and an iron barb 
neatly let into a brass stem. Many bones and antlers of Reindeer 
lay around, also bones of the Walrus. Hundreds of the sterna of 
Mergulus alle showed that these birds formed no inconsiderable 
part of the subsistence of the natives at certain seasons. The stems 
of Cassiope tetragona had been used as fuel, and considerable 
quantities of this plant were stored away in dry clefts of the rock- 
A dog-sledge that we found, made entirely of bone most ingeniously 
fastened together with thongs of hide, was a marvel of strength and 
elasticity ; the runners were made of pieces of walrus-tusk. At 
various spots along the shore of the fiord are sites of ancient 
residences; these have fallen in, and are now only noticeable by 
the extra green of the mounds. Immense quantities of bones 
are scattered round these spots, with many fragments of bone- 
implements. 
There appears to be a general impression that the tribe of 
Eskimo inhabiting the belt of coast-line between Melville Bay and 
the Humboldt Glacier is rapidly dying off, and before long will be 
extinct. Kane,* referring to these people as he found them in 
1854 and 1853, describes them as— 
‘A simple-minded people, for whom it seems to be decreed that the year 
must very soon cease to renew its changes. It pains me when I think of 
their approaching destiny,—in the region of night and winter, where the 
earth yields no fruit and the waters are locked,—without the resorts of skill 
or even the rude materials of art, and walled in from the world by barriers 
of ice without an outlet. The narrow belt subjected to their nomadic range 
cannot be less than six hundred miles long, and throughout this extent of 
country every man knows every man. I have a census, exactly confirmed 
by three separate informants, which enablés me to count by name about one 
hundred and forty souls, scattered along from Kosoak, the Great River 
* «Arctic Explorations,’ vol. ii., pp. 210, 211. 
