"When the doomed vessels arrived at Marble Island, it was late in the autumn of 1719, and in making the harbour through the ice, the larger was considerably damaged. The party landed safely, however, and at once set about building the house. As soon as the ice permitted, in the following summer, the Esquimaux paid them a further visit, and observed that the white strangers were largely reduced in number and that the survivors were very unhealthy in appearance. According to the account given by these Esquimaux, these were very busily employed, but the nature of their employment they could not easily describe. It is probable they were lengthening the long-boat or repairing the ship, and to support this conjecture, forty-eight years later there lay, at a little distance from the house, a quantity of oak chips, 'most assuredly made by carpenters.'" Much havoc must have been thenceforward wrought among the explorers, who could not repair their ship, which even may by this time have been sunk; and by the second winter, only twenty souls out of fifty remained. [Sidenote: Wretched death of Knight and his men.] That same winter, some of the Esquimaux had taken up their abode on the opposite side of the harbour to the English, and frequently supplied them with such provisions as they had, which consisted chiefly of whale's blubber, seal's flesh and train oil. When the spring advanced, the natives crossed over to the mainland, and upon visiting Marble Island in the summer of 1721 found only five of the white men alive, and those in such distress that they instantly seized upon and devoured the seal's flesh and whale blubber, given them in trade by their visitors, in a raw state. This occasioned a severe physical disorder which destroyed three of the five; and the other two, though very weak made shift to bury their dead comrades. These two survivors eked out a wretched existence for many weeks, frequently resorting to the summit of an adjacent rock, in the vain hope of being seen by some relief party. But alas, they were doomed to a daily disappointment; the Esquimaux themselves had little to offer them; and at last they were seen by the wandering natives to crouch down close together and cry aloud like children, the tears rolling down their cheeks. First one of the pair died, and then the other, in an attempt to dig a grave for his fellow. The Esquimau who told the story, led the whalers to the spot and showed them the skulls and the larger bones of the luckless pair, then lying above ground not a great distance from the dwelling. It is believed that the last survivor must have been the armourer or smith of the expedition, because according to the account given by the aborigines, he was always employed in working iron into implements for them, some of which they could still show.