ormation
afterward obtained when nearer the spot, we had reason to suppose this
land must reach beyond the seventy-second degree of latitude in a
northerly direction; so that these people possess a personal knowledge
of the Continent of America and its adjacent islands, from that parallel
to Chesterfield Inlet in 63-3/4 deg., being a distance of more than five
hundred miles reckoned in a direct line, besides the numerous turnings
and windings of the coast along which they are accustomed to travel.
Ewerat and some others had been a considerable distance up the Wager
River; but no record had been preserved among them of Captain
Middleton's visit to that inlet about the middle of the last century.

Of the Indians they know enough by tradition to hold them in
considerable dread, on account of their cruel and ferocious manners.
When, on one occasion, we related the circumstances of the inhuman
massacre described by Hearne, they crowded round us in the hut,
listening with mute and almost breathless attention; and the mothers
drew their children closer to them, as if to guard them from the
dreadful catastrophe.

The Esquimaux take some animals in traps, and by a very ingenious
contrivance of this kind they caught two wolves at Winter Island. It
consists of a small house built of ice, at one end of which a door, made
of the same plentiful material, is fitted to slide up and down in a
groove; to the upper part of this a line is attached, and, passing over
the roof, is let down into the trap at the inner end, and there held by
slipping an eye in the end of it over a peg of ice left for the purpose.
Over the peg, however, is previously placed a loose grummet, to which
the bait is fastened, and a false roof placed over all to hide the line.
The moment the animal drags at the bait, the grummet slips off the peg,
bringing with it the line that held up the door, and this, falling down,
closes the trap and secures him,

A trap for birds is formed by building a house of snow just large enough
to contain one person, who closes himself up in it. On the top is left a
small aperture, through which the man thrusts one of his hands to secure
the bird the moment he alights to take away a bait of meat laid beside
it. It is principally gulls that are taken thus; and the boys sometimes
amuse themselves in this manner. A trap in which they catch foxes has
been mentioned in another place.

The sledges belonging to these Esquimaux were in genera