shore, afforded the means of effecting the hazardous enterprise.

On questioning them what was their object in risking their lives in
so extraordinary an adventure, they replied, that they wanted wood to
make canoes, and visit the Esquimaux on the south side of the Strait.

"And what if you had been overtaken by a storm?" said I.

"We should all have gone to the bottom," was the cool reply.

In fact, they had made a very narrow escape, a storm having come on
just as they landed on the first island.

The fact of these people having crossed Hudson's Strait on so rude
and frail a conveyance, strongly corroborates, I think, the opinion
that America was originally peopled from Asia. The Asiatic side of
Behring's Strait affording timber sufficiently large for the purpose
of building boats or canoes, there seems nothing improbable in
supposing that, when once in possession of that wonderful and useful
invention--a boat, they might be induced, even by curiosity--that
powerful stimulus to adventure--to visit the nearest island, and from
thence proceed to the continent of America; and finding it, perhaps,
possessed of superior advantages to the shores they had left, settle
there. My voyageur was evidently induced as much by curiosity as by
the desire of procuring a canoe, to visit the south side of Hudson's
Strait, where the passage is as wide as between the island in
Behring's Strait and the two continents.

At an early period of the winter I was gratified by the arrival of
despatches from the civilized world. The packet was found by the