Aug. 1858. TRAVELS OF ESQUIMAUX. 167 



The natives gave Captain Patterson to under- 

 stand that they got it from the wreck to the 

 north. 



In July, 1854, Captain Deuchars was at Pond's 

 Bay, and many natives visited his ship, coming 

 over the ice on twelve or fourteen sledges made 

 of ship's planking. Now at this time Sir Ed- 

 ward Belcher's ships were still frozen up in 

 Barrow Strait. My own impression is that the 

 natives whom Captain Deuchars communicated 

 with in 1854 were visitors at Pond's Bay — 

 certainly from the southward — and probably 

 attracted by the barter recently grown up at 

 that whaling rendezvous. Having discovered 

 the use of the saws obtained by barter from our 

 whalers, they had successfully applied them to 

 the stout planking of the old wrecks, which they 

 could not have stripped off with any tools pre- 

 viously in their possession. 



That the various tribes, or rather groups of 

 families, occasionally visit each other, sometimes 

 for change of hunting-grounds, but more fre- 

 quently for barter, is well known. Captain 

 Parker told me that a native whom he had met 

 one summer at Durbin Island, came on board 

 his ship at Pond's Bay the following year. The 

 distance between the two places, as travelled by 

 this man in a single winter, is scarcely short of 



