C H A P . two months before, and came again in the expectation of getting a few
• _ more blue beads and foreign articles for some nets and fish. They immediately
Oct.
IS26.
recognised such of the officers as they had seen before, and
were delighted at meeting them. Some of the beads which they had
obtained were now suspended to different parts of their dress, in the same
manner as was practised by the Esquimaux of Melrille Peninsula, and
round their necks, or were made into bracelets. They corroborated the
former account of the inlet, the length of which they estimated a long
day's paddle: our observations made it thirty-nine miles. At the back
of the point where we landed there was another inlet, to the end of
which they said their baidars could also go, notwithstanding we saw a bar
across its mouth so shallow that the gulls waded over from shore to shore.
Near us there was a burying-ground, which, in addition to what we
had already observed at Cape Espenburg, furnished several examples
of the manner in which this tribe of natives dispose of their dead.
In some instances a platform was constructed of drift wood, raised
about two feet and a quarter from the ground, upon which the body
was placed with its head to the westward, and a double tent of drift
wood erected over i t ; the inner one with spars about seven feet
long, and the outer one with some that were three times that length.
They were placed close together, and at first no doubt sufficiently so
to prevent the depredations of foxes and wolves; but they had yielded
at la st; and all the bodies, and even the hides that covered them, had
suffered by these rapacious animals.
In these tents of the dead there were no coffins or planks, as at
Cape Espenburg ; the bodies were dressed in a frock made of eider-duck
skins, with one of deer-skin over it, and were covered with a sea-horse
hide, such as the natives use for their baidars. Suspended to the
poles, and on the ground near them, were several Esquimaux implements,
consisting of wooden trays, paddles, and a tambourine, which,
we were informed, as well as signs could convey the meaning of the
natives, were placed there for the use of the deceased, who, in the
next world, (pointing to the western sky), ate, drank, and sang songs.
Having no interpreter, this was all the information I could obtain;
but the custom of placing such implements around the receptacles