140 TEMPTATIONS TO BARTER. Chap. IX. 



remembrance of the memorable transaction. It is much 

 better for him thus to receive annual gifts than to have 

 received a large quantity at first, as the improvidence of 

 these men surpasses belief. 



Of the " rod of iron about four feet long, supposed to have 

 been at one time galvanised," which was brought home in 

 1856 by Captain Patterson, and forwarded to the Admiralty, 

 I could obtain no information. The natives were shown 

 galvanised iron, and said they had never seen any before ; 

 if their countrymen had any, it must have come from the 

 whalers ; none like it was found in the wrecks. Rod-iron is 

 very valuable to Esquimaux for spears and lances, and nar- 

 whals' horns very tempting to the seamen, not only as 

 valuable curiosities, but the ivory is worth half a crown a 

 pound ; and I have but little doubt that many of the things 

 said to have been stolen by the natives were fraudulently 

 bartered away by the sailors. That there was no galvanised 

 iron on board any of the Government searching-ships, nor in 

 the missing expedition which sailed from England as far 

 back as 1845, I am almost certain. But is it certain that 

 this iron rod was galvanised ? The natives gave Captain 

 Patterson to understand that they got it from the wreck 

 to the north. 



In July, 1854, Captain Deuchars was at Pond's Bay, and 

 many natives visited his ship, coming over the ice on twelve 

 or fourteen sledges made of ship's planking. Now at this 

 time Sir Edward Belcher's ships were still frozen up in 

 Barrow Strait. My own impression is that the natives 

 whom Captain Deuchars communicated with in 1854 were 

 visitors at Pond's Bay — certainly from the southward — and 

 probably attracted by the barter recently grown up at that 

 whaling rendezvous. Having discovered the use of the saws 

 obtained by barter from our whalers, they had successfully 

 applied them to the stout planking of the old wrecks, which 



