NOTES FROM AN ARCTIC JOURNAL. 418 
at the base of a glacier near Cape Melville, to the wind-loved hut of 
Anoatok.” 
Dr. Hayes,* writing of the same people as he found them five 
years later, says that, from information which he obtained through 
Hans and Kalutunah, he estimated the tribe to number about one 
hundred souls—a very considerable diminution since Dr, Kane left 
them in 1855. The official account of the American Expedition 
under Hall, mentions that between the autumn of 1872 and the 
Ist May, 1873, one hundred and two Eskimo—men, women and 
children—visited Polaris House, with as many as one hundred 
and fifty dogs, the whole population along the coast from Melville 
Bay to Humboldt Glacier being estimated at one hundred and 
fifty souls. This is very satisfactory, for, in spite of Kane’s gloomy 
prognosticatious, we find the tribe, after a lapse of nearly twenty 
years, exhibiting no sign of diminution. 
Considerable interest must always attach to this isolated tribe, 
existing, under the most adverse circumstances, as the very 
northern outpost of man. Science and civilization are to a certain 
extent their debtors; they saved the lives of Kane and his com- 
panions ; without their assistance Hayes would have been unable 
to carry on his investigations in Smith Sound; and they aided the 
party who escaped from the wreck of the ‘Polaris’ and wintered 
near Littleton Island. The journal of Hans Hendrik, one of the 
Greenlanders who accompanied our Expedition, and who resided 
for five years with the “ unchristened natives of the north,” records 
that— 
“In the days of yore their ancestors used to visit Upernivik, for which 
reason they still speak of ‘Southlanders.’ Those northern people had for 
their merchandise walrus-teeth, for which they got wood, whereas the 
Southlanders had wood to barter with. Their ancestors also possessed 
‘kayaks.’ The men yonder in the north subsist by the pursuit of White 
Whales along the edge of the ice, using four hunting bladders in connection 
with one line, but on the big ice only one bladder. They get the Seals 
which lie near their breathing-holes upon the ice by creeping up to them 
and harpooning them. They pursue the Walrus by the aid of two hunting 
lines, both ends of which are furnished with a harpoon, and their spears are 
headed with a chisel. As soon as the line becomes tightened by the pulling 
of the stricken animal, they thrust this into the ice to hold. They also 
catch Seals by having many breathing-holes at once occupied by men. One 
* «The Open Polar Sea,’ p. 386. 
