Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/292

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262
FLIGHT OF

about half a mile. On its northern side we found two skulls, the sole remaining memorial of the atrocious massacre of the Esquimaux by Hearne's Chipewyans in 1772. Several ancient stone circles, indicating the camping-place of these ill-fated people, were quite overgrown with willows. Some of the wooden pegs of Franklin's tents of 1821 still stood in the ground; and, in the reach below, old ropes, tarpaulins, wrappers, &c., left by Richardson's party in 1826, lay scattered about. At the bottom of the fall the flat shore to the foot of the hills, several hundred yards from the river, was occupied by icy fragments, for the most part six feet thick. We proceeded to within three miles of the sea, when an accident obliged us to encamp. Numbers of laughing geese were hatching on the borders of the ponds and swamps in the adjacent plain. During the stillness of the night the roar of the Bloody Fall was plainly audible, although six miles distant. There was a hard frost at the time.

On the 2nd, one of the men, proceeding a little way along the coasts descried two tents of Esquimaux, but returned unseen by the inmates. Next day, Mr. Dease and some of our people, walking near the mouth of the river, suddenly came in sight of four Esquimaux, ap-