12 
MUSEUM Bin^LETIN NO. 6. 
are from the Alaskan coast, they and the Siberian goods must 
have had an even start thence for the east, and there is little 
doubt any metal articles would have outstripped them, for when 
one gets east of Bathurst one who brings pots from the west is 
carrying coal to Newcastle. 
Between Herschel island and Cape Bathurst there do not 
seem ever to have been regular trading expeditions. As above 
pointed out, the Mackenzie delta and the vicinity were so much 
one community that there was promiscuous visiting back and 
forth at most seasons. Within this section the products and 
resources of one locality were so nearly identical with those of 
any other that the trading must have consisted chiefly in the 
westerners passing Alaskan wares east and the easterners pass- 
ing eastern wares west. 
From Cape Parry there were two trading routes to the east. 
The one, whose existence is to be inferred from the map, lay east 
along the mainland coast. The intercourse along this route has 
been completely forgotten by the people of Baillie island, who 
indeed, no doubt, seldom went farther east than Horton river — 
they themselves say they did not. The continuous chain of 
ruined houses, graves, and such signs of travel as broken sleds, 
paddles, etc., that connects Cape Bathurst with Cape Bexley is 
in itself proof enough that there was such traffic; besides, the 
easterners have not forgotten it, though the westerners have. 
The second, less self-evident trade route led north from 
Cape Parry across the restless, never solidly frozen sea that 
separates the mainland from Banks island. The traffic here was 
carried on exclusively by the westerners — at least, so the Cape 
Bathurst people say. This accounts for the breaking off of the 
intercourse as soon as the westerners began to trade with the 
Hudson’s Bay Company — the easterners did not know the route, 
and were afraid of the westerners, as the Rae River people were 
in Richardson’s day and as they and all their neighbours still are. 
The Cape Bexley people dread the half-forgotten westerners 
with whom they once traded almost as much as the (to them) 
semi-fabulous Indians. 
What the Cape Bathurst people traded east chiefly were the 
articles they had bought from the west; what they chiefly re- 
