scattered dry bones. Abandoned camps, and some of them large ones and
not very old, were distributed at frequent intervals, though we saw no
more of the Indians themselves until we reached Ungava Bay.

Wolves were numerous. We saw their tracks in the sand and fresh signs
of them were common. They always abound where there are caribou,
which form their main living. Ptarmigans in the early morning clucked
on the river banks like chickens in a barnyard, and we saw some very
large flocks of them. Geese and black ducks, making their way to the
southward, were met with daily. But we had no arms or ammunition with
which to kill them. I saw some fox signs, but there were very few or
no rabbit signs, strange to say, until we were a full hundred miles
farther down the river.

This camp, where we found the stovepipe, we soon discovered was nearly
at the head of Indian House Lake, so called by a Hudson's Bay Company
factor-John McLean-because of the numbers of Indians that he found
living on its shores. McLean, about seventy years earlier, had
ascended the river in the interests of his company, for the purpose of
establishing interior posts. The most inland Post that he erected was
at the lower end of this lake, which is fifty-five miles in length.
He also built a Post on a large lake which he describes in his
published journal as lying to the west of Indian House Lake. The
exact location of this latter lake is not now known, but I am inclined
to think it is one which the Indians say is the source of Whale River,
a stream of considerable size emptying into Ungava Bay one hundred and
twenty miles to the westward of the mouth of the George River. These
two rivers are doubtless much nearer together, however, farther
inland, where Whale River has its rise. The difficulty experienced by
McLean in getting supplies to these two Posts rendered them