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 kad 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 [ 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 
