RAE'S DISCOVERY. 471 



stance of the information then and subsequently obtained 

 from various sources was to the following effect : 



" In the spring, four winters past (1850), while some 

 Esquimaux families were killing seals near the north 

 shore of a large island, named in Arrow smith's charts 

 King William's Land, about forty white men were seen 

 travelling in company southward over the ice, and drag- 

 ging a boat and sledges with them. They were passing 

 along the west shore of the above-named island. None 

 of the party could speak the Esquimaux language so 

 well as to be understood, but by signs the natives were 

 led to believe that the ship or ships had been crushed 

 by ice, and that they were now going to where they ex- 

 pected to find deer to shoot. From the appearance of 

 the men --all of whom, with the exception of an officer, 

 were hauling on the drag-ropes of the sledge, and looked 

 thin they were then supposed to be getting short of 

 provisions ; and they purchased a small seal, or piece of 

 seal, from the natives. The officer was described as 

 being a tall, stout, middle-aged man. When their day'a 

 journey terminated, they pitched tents to rest in. 



" At a later date the same season, but previous to the 

 disruption of the ice, the corpses of some thirty persons 

 and some graves were discovered on the continent, and 

 five dead bodies on an island near it, about a long day's 

 iourney to the north-west of the mouth of a large stream, 

 which can be no other than Back's Great Fish River 

 (named by the Esquimaux Oot-koo-hi-ca-lik), as its de- 

 scription and that of the low shore in the neighborhood 

 of Point Ogle and Montreal Island agree exactly with 

 that of Sir George Back. ' Some of the bodies were in 

 a tent, or tents ; others were under the boat, which had 

 been turned over to form a shelter ; and some lay scat- 

 tered about in different directions. Of those seen on 

 the island, it was supposed that one was that of an officer 



