disposed in large and regular stitches.  Before the passages already described, others were now added, from ten to fifteen feet in length, and from four to five feet high, neatly constructed of large flat slabs of ice, cemented together by snow and water.  Some huts also were entirely built of this material, of a rude circular or octangular form, and roofed with skins like the others.  The light and transparent effect within these singular habitations gave one the idea of being in a house of ground glass, and their newness made them look clean, comfortable, and wholesome.  Not so the more substantial bone huts, which, from their extreme closeness and accumulated filth, emitted an almost insupportable stench, to which an abundant supply of raw and half-putrid walrus’ flesh in no small degree contributed.  The passages to these are so low as to make it necessary to crawl on the hands and knees to enter them; and the floors of the apartments were in some places so slippery, that we could with difficulty pass and repass, without the risk of continually falling among the filth with which they were covered.  These were the dirtiest, because the most durable, of any Esquimaux habitations we had yet seen; and it may be supposed they did not much improve during the winter.  Some bitches with young were very carefully and conveniently lodged in small square kennels, made of four upright slabs of ice covered with a fifth, and having a small hole as a door in one of the sides.  The canoes were also laid upon two slabs of this kind, like tall tombstones standing erect; and a quantity of spare slabs lying in different places, gave the ground an appearance somewhat resembling that of a statuary’s yard.  Large stores of walrus’ and seals’ flesh, principally the former, were deposited under heaps of stones all about the beach, and, as we afterward found, in various other parts of the island, which showed that they had made some provision for the winter, though, with their enormous consumption of food, it proved a very inadequate one.

Leaving the Fury at seven A.M. on the 26th, and being favoured by a fresh easterly breeze, we soon cleared the southwest point of Igloolik; and, having passed the little island of Oogli=aghioo, immediately perceived to the W.N.W. of us a group of islands, so exactly answering the description of Coxe’s Group, both in character and situation, as to leave no doubt of our being exactly in Captain Lyon’s former track.  Being still favoured by the wind and by the total absence of fixed ice, we reached the islands at eleven A.M., and, after sailing a mile or two among them, came at once in sight of two bluffs, forming the passage pointed out by Toolemak, and then supposed to be called Khemig.  The land to the north, called by the Esquimaux Khiadlaghioo, was now found to be, as we had before conjectured, the southern shore of Richards’s Bay.  The land on our left or to the southward proved an island, five miles and a quarter in length, of the same bold