On a Fragment of Human Skeleton. 69 



The frontier line of known migration is therefore complete. 

 Henceforward any hypothesis that inhabited lands exist in the 

 unknown North must be based only on the vague traditions of 

 the tribes on both sides of Behring Strait that emigrants from 

 their shores have reached Kellett's Land. 



But the traces we have hitherto spoken of do not include any 

 vestige of man himself. 



Even at Norman Lockyer Island, where we found the remains 

 of a whole city of not only tent circles but " yourts," meant for 

 winter habitations, we failed after hours of careful search to find 

 anything like a burial place. When Captain Feilden discovered 

 the lamp and sledge, the way in which the lamp was broken — so 

 like the broken vessels left on the Indian graves of the far west — 

 and the valuable pieces of wood that had been left lying beside it 

 suggested the possibility at least that they had been left for the 

 future use of their buried owner, but I could find no heap of stones 

 or anything else like a tomb in the neighbourhood. 



But seventeen miles backward, along the coast on the northern 

 shore of Lady Franklin Strait, and at the most southern point 

 overlooking Kennedy Channel, the fragment of human femur 

 which I exhibit this evening was picked up. I am not aware 

 that any human bone has been found in a higher latitude than 

 the Etah burial-ground at Port Foulke, and this fragment lay 

 200 miles beyond that spot. The spot where it was found was 

 eighty feet above the beach, and 100 yards inland, opposite the 

 spit of Bellot Island, and about three-quarters of a mile eastward 

 from the marks of camps on " Dutch " Island — the rock already 

 spoken of. It was embedded in the side of one of those little 

 polygonal hillocks into which the frost splits clayey ground. Both 

 ends of the bone are broken off, the one through the neck and 

 trochanters, the other about two inches and a quarter from the 

 lowest point of the articulating surface. It has been gnawed by 

 either wolf or fox, though I think the jaws of the little arctic 

 fox are hardly strong enough to break the ends off so strong a 

 bone. Like every other trace of man found at high latitudes in 

 Smith's Sound it is very old ; the tongue adheres to its surface, 

 it is spotted with lichen, and a moss has found root in the can- 

 cellous structure of its upper end. The fragment measures eleven 



G 



