In corroboration of my idea that these inhabitants of the Arctic zone were once very numerous along the north shore of Barrow's Strait and 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 northern origin, and of their tales of remote regions where beacons on hills had been erected to denote the way. Surely all this points to the long and landward route pursued by this extraordinary people.