he Inuit must have
watched the English depart, and soon visited the abandoned island.
The furnishings of the cottage, the remains of other buildings,
and the buried caches were recovered and valued as curiosities
or as useful materials. The blacksmith's anvil became the object
of a weightlifting challenge, an event that was enjoyed for
generations.
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Inuit drawings of the blacksmith's anvil left behind by the
English on Kodlunarn Island.
From My Life with the Eskimos by Charles Francis Hall
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The Inuit salvaged wood, metal objects, ceramics, stove tiles,
roofing tiles and other materials that had been left by the English.
Besides being used by local groups, these objects were widely
traded around Baffin Island.
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In 1578, Frobisher's men buried supplies beneath this stone cache.
Photograph: Robert McGhee
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Most valuable must have been the large stocks of English oak
that had been meant for the barracks to house the planned colony,
and that were buried in one of the mines on Countess of Warwick's
Island. Seven years after Frobisher's third expedition, and over
200 km further north along the Baffin Island coast, the explorer
John Davis found an Inuit sled that was partially built from sawn
oak boards which must have come from the cache on the Countess of
Warwick's Island. Today, English materials continue to be found in
Inuit archaeological sites occupied in the centuries after Frobisher.
For three centuries, during which time Europe was unaware of the
location of Meta Incognita, the Inuit preserved historical traditions
relating to Frobisher's expeditions and the locations where he and
his crew mined rock, repaired ships, and left behind masses of
curious and valuable material.
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