A little north of this place found a tent place and three tin
cups. About Victory Point found a grave, with a skeleton, clothes, and
a jack-knife with one blade broken. Saw no books. In a little bay on
the north side of Collinson Inlet saw a quantity of clothes. There was
plenty of snow on the ground at the time they were there.
[Illustration: SNOW-HUTS ON CAPE HERSCHEL.]
Viewing this statement in the light of our subsequent search upon this
ground, I am inclined to believe that the grave they found was not at
Victory Point, but was Irving's grave, about three miles below there.
We saw no evidence of any grave at Victory Point, though we made a
particularly extended search around that entire section of the country.
The little bay spoken of is also probably the little bay where
Lieutenant Irving's grave was discovered. There is a little bay on the
north side of Collinson Inlet, but Lieutenant Schwatka and I visited it
several times without finding any traces of clothing or any other
evidences of white men having been there; and from what we saw at other
places it seems almost impossible that there could have been much there
as late as five years ago without some indications remaining. The
vicinity of places where boats had been destroyed, or camps where
clothing was found, were invariably indicated by pieces of cloth among
the rocks, at greater or less intervals, for a long distance--sometimes
as far as one or two miles on either side, and it would be almost
impossible to escape seeing the principal point when led to it by such
gradually cumulative evidence.
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