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for him twelve days later on his return from Barrow; but on its voyage 
south the Bear , like the mail schooner, encountered a gale in Bering strait 
and was unable to stop at the Diomedes. After waiting on the islands 
until August 20, a small launch belonging to the Enterprise Steamship 
Company crossed over and carried him to Teller. There he was weather- 
bound for five days, but availed himself of the opportunity to make a short 
trip inland up Tuksuk river, where he located a pictograph, the only one 
yet recorded from Eskimo territory. He finally reached Nome on August 
29, too late in the season to charter a vessel or to risk visiting other places 
of interest along the coast. He, therefore, returned south by the first 
passenger steamer and arrived at Ottawa on September 20. 
The archaeological results of the trip were somewhat disappointing. 
No new evidences were discovered of very early migrations between Asia 
and America, and no remains that definitely solve the problem as to whether 
the Eskimo culture arose in Alaska or elsewhere. However, from some 
ancient ruins at Wales and on the Diomede islands there were recovered 
nearly three thousand specimens of Eskimo tools and weapons that throw 
considerable light on the early settlement of these places. 
In his linguistic work the writer met with more success, being able to 
gather extensive vocabularies from four distinct dialects. These new 
notes, combined with the linguistic notes gathered in former years, provide 
abundant material for the compilation of a comparative vocabulary of 
the western Eskimo dialects, a vocabulary that should prove of great 
service to philologists seeking to trace the affiliations of Eskimo with 
other languages spoken in America and Asia. 
ARCHAEOLOGY 
Archaeological work was begun at Wales. All the native men were 
absent at the reindeer herds or employed at a tin mine in the hinterland, 
but through the agency of the schoolteacher, Mr. C. M. Garber, an old 
man and half a dozen boy scouts were secured as labourers. After a pre- 
liminary survey of the ground, excavations were commenced on a mound 
a few yards behind the present native village. The mound was roughly 
oval in shape, 75 yards long by 50 yards wide, with a modern graveyard at 
its west end. Its surface was pitted with rectangular depressions partly 
filled with water, and here and there the rib of a whale protruded above 
the ground. Evidently these were old house sites, whale ribs being still 
employed by the Eskimos for the walls and roofs of their dwellings. Skirt- 
ing the mound was a creek that expanded lower down into a small lagoon. 
Numerous sand-bars blocked its outlet to the sea, so that it was impossible 
to enter the creek from the salt water even in the lightest canoe. Yet the 
topography of the place suggested — what the traditions of the Eskimos 
confirmed — that the inhabitants of the mound dwellings were able to 
paddle their skin boats right up to their doors. 
Eight pits were excavated on this mound; five proved to be dwelling 
houses, and three kitchens. The soil was tundrous and free from boulders, 
but it was frozen solid below the first 6 inches. Artificial methods of 
thawing it out, such as forcing cold water into the ground through iron 
pipes, were not available. In some cases it might have been possible to 
build fires in the pits, although driftwood was exceedingly scarce along the 
