Lancaster Sound, the following localities were found to abound with
ruins:--The gulf between Bathurst and Cornwallis Land, the whole
southern shore of Cornwallis Island, Wellington Channel, Cape Spenser,
and Cape Riley; Radstock Bay, Ommanney Harbour, near Cape Warrender,
where the "Intrepid" discovered numerous well-finished graves, bearing
the marks of a _comparatively_ more recent date. Passing Cape
Warrender, I supposed the remnant of the northern emigration from Asia
to have still travelled round the coast; the more so, as at Jones's
Sound, the only spot one of our officers happened to land upon,
Esquimaux had evidently once lived. (_Vide_ page 173.) The Arctic
Highlander, Erasmus York, who was serving in our squadron, seemed to
believe his mother to have dwelt about Smith's Sound: all his ideas of
things that he had heard of, but not seen, referred to places
northward. He knew a musk-ox when shown a sketch of one, and said that
they were spoken of by his brethren: with a pencil he could sketch the
coast-line _northward_ of where he embarked, Cape York, as far as Whale
Sound, or even farther, by tradition; but _southward_ he knew of nothing.

Old whale-fishermen say that, when in former days their pursuit carried
them into the head of Baffin's Bay, they found the natives numerous;
and it is undoubted that, in spite of an apparently severe mortality
amongst these Arctic Highlanders, or Northern Esquimaux, the stock is
not yet extinct. Every whaler who has visited the coast northward of
Cape York, during late years, reports deserted villages and dead
bodies, as if some sudden epidemic had cut down men and women suddenly
and in their prime. Our squadron found the same thing. The "Intrepid's"
people found in the huts of the natives which were situated close to
the winter quarters of the "North Star," in Wolstenholme Sound,
numerous corpses, unburied, indeed, as if the poor creatures had been
suddenly cut off, and their brethren had fled from them. Poor York,
who, amongst the dead, recognized his own brother, described the malady
of which they died as one of the chest or lungs: at any rate, the
mortality was great.

Where did the supply of human life come from? Not from the south, for
then the Northern and Southern Esquimaux would have known of each
other's existence. Yet the Southern Esquimaux have faint traditions of
the head of Baffin's Bay and Lancaster Sound; and Egede and Crantz tell
us of their belief in a nor