268 THE LABRADOR ESKIMOS AND THEIR FORMER RANGE. 



Other game, and partly to contact with the civilization 

 of this coast, their close winter houses inducing con- 

 sumption and other chest troubles ; but whatever the 

 causes, the race is rapidly fading away, going by entire 

 families. Cole was intelligent and could read and write. 



On our way to Strawberry Harbor we were boarded 

 by an Eskimo who paddled up to our vessel in his kayak. 

 He had been living in the bay during the summer. The 

 next day I landed on a little flat islet near our harbor, 

 and found traces of recent Eskimo occupation. An 

 Eskimo family had evidently been summering there in a 

 sealskin tent. The marks of their temporary sojourn 

 were the circle of water-worn stones which had been 

 used to pitch the tent, the feathers and bones of sea-fowl 

 which had been shot or snared, scattered bones of the 

 seal, and other unmistakable signs of Eskimo occupancy 

 and of Eskimo personal uncleanliness. While here'we 

 learned that some Eskimos were spending the summer 

 on an island hard by, and we tried to find one to pilot 

 us to Hopedale, but were unsuccessful. We, however, 

 obtained one who had received some education and was 

 then living ten miles up the bay with a Norwegian in 

 the employ of the Hudson Bay Company, his pay being 

 fifty dollars a year. 



At the time I visited Hopedale, which was in the 

 summer of 1864, in the expedition of Mr. William Brad- 

 ford, the well-known artist, the Eskimo population of 

 that station was about two hundred. It was reported to 

 us that during the preceding March twenty-four Eskimos 

 had died of " colds ;" while at Okkak twenty-one had died, 

 and the same number at Nain. Thus over a tenth part 

 of the native population at these stations had died of 



