362 SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



1822. com ing in near the ships, (most probably that which had lately been dis- 

 y^-rsu lodged from Richards' Bay,) he had shifted them round the point into the 

 births where it was my intention to place them during the winter; where 

 they now lay in from eleven to fourteen fathoms at the distance of three 

 cables' lengths from the shore. 



The point of Oonga-looi/at is rendered conspicuous at some distance by 

 fifteen walls of loose stones, disposed in a tolerably regular oval form, 

 about live feet high, from forty-one to twenty-seven feet in length, and 

 from thirty-three to eighteen in breadth, the longest diameter being from 

 north to south. The greater part of these had at their south ends a 

 kind of recess, and some of them two, as in the annexed figures 1 and 

 2, the entrance being through a gap in the wall, at e. A smaller oval 



North. 



of stones was placed in the middle of the principal one, and had been 

 used simply for- confining the tent-skins of the Esquimaux, who had left 

 behind them the usual traces of recent habitation, such as oil, bones and 

 putrid flesh in abundance. The small central space at s was sunk about 

 a foot below the level of the ground, and the parts marked b had served as 

 beds, being raised with flat stones about a foot, and covered with shingle. 

 The use of the principal or outer circles, which differed from any thing we 

 had observed elsewhere, was not at first very obvious to us, but Ewerat and 

 Togolat one day explained that they were only used at the killing of a 

 whale, on which rare and grand occasion they indulge, it seems, in more 

 than ordinary festivity and merriment. As far as we could understand their 

 description of this fete, it appears that the whole animal or a principal part 



