Some attempts were made to ascertain the religious notions of the Arctic Highlanders, but these seem to have proved unsatisfactory; and, perhaps, from the inability of Sacheuse to question them on such a subject. They had a king, whom they represented to be a strong man, very good, and greatly beloved. His house was described to be of stone, and nearly as large as the ship; and they said that every man paid to him a portion of all which they caught or found. They could not be made to understand what was meant by war, nor did the voyagers see, among them, any warlike weapons. It is peculiarly deserving of remark, that these Indians, who derive much of their subsistence from the water, have no canoes or vessels of any description, in which they can go afloat; nor do they appear to have any names by which boats or canoes are designated. It is true that they have no wood for the construction of floating vessels; but such might, without difficulty, be constructed of bone covered with skins. On the 16th of August, the ice had become sufficiently open, to permit the passage of the vessels to the northward; and they consequently proceeded on their voyage. In these high latitudes, a kind of marine birds, called Little Awks (_alca alle_) were observed in countless multitudes, and afforded to the sailors, a grateful supply of fresh food. With three muskets, no fewer than one thousand two hundred and sixty-three of them were killed in one day; and, of this number, ninety-three were brought down by one discharge of the muskets. When the ships were in latitude 75 degrees 54 minutes, the snow on the face of the cliffs was observed to be stained of a deep crimson colour. Some of this snow being collected in buckets, it was found to resemble, in appearance, raspberry ice-cream: when dissolved, the liquor seemed not unlike muddy port-wine; and the sediment appeared, through a microscope, to be composed of dark-red globules. Some of this sediment was brought to England, and it is generally supposed to have been a vegetable substance, the seed, probably, of some species of fungus; or, perhaps, to have been itself a minute kind of fungus. On the 18th of August, the ships passed _Cape Dudley Digges_, six miles northward of which a majestic glacier, or mass of ice, was remarked to occupy a space of four miles square, extending one mile into the sea, and rising to the height of at least a hundred feet. On the same day the vessels passed _Wolstenholme_ and _Whale Sounds_. About midnight of the 19th, _Sir Thomas Smith's Sound_ was distinctly seen. Captain Ross considered the bottom of this sound to have been eighteen leagues distant; but its entrance, he says, was completely blocked up by ice. On the 21st, the ships stood over to explore an opening, supposed to have been that called _Alderman Jones's Sound_; but Captain Ross says that the ice and fog prevented a near approach.