3 36 
GREENLAND VOYAGE. 
which the coast is so extensively pierced. Thus, 
wherever the seals arc found along shore, there, 
we must suppose, the inhabitants would be met 
with. There is little to be gathered from the 
state of the hamlets discovered, as respects the time 
of their desertion. The huts being without roofs 
w r as no argument for their antiquity; because the 
framing being of wood, a material of extraordina¬ 
ry value in a country in which none is produced, 
would doubtless be removed, and carried away on 
the desertion of the hamlets by the inhabitants. 
This country, barren and desolate as it is, ap¬ 
pears to be by no means so thinly inhabited as 
might have been expected. The numbers, in¬ 
deed, in the parts we examined, must have been 
very considerable. For it is worthy of remark, 
that we never landed, in any one instance, upon any 
coast having a southern aspect, and possessing the 
least portion of flat land near the beach, without 
finding traces of inhabitants; and sometimes such 
traces were met with, even on the coasts fronting 
o 
the east and north. I believe there were but two 
or three places, out of the numerous landings that 
were made by myself, and by the captains and 
officers of the Trafalgar and Fame, in which no 
traces of inhabitants were met with. 
Most of the relics of inhabitants discovered in 
this country were indicative of the people, by 
