2o6 RAE'S STATEMENT CONFIRMED. Chap. XII. 



return, and will trade more with us ; also that we shall find 

 natives upon Montreal Island at the time of our arriving there. 



Next morning, 4th March, several natives came to us 

 again. I bought a spear 6^ feet long from a man who told 

 Petersen distinctly that a ship having three masts had been 

 crushed by the ice out in the sea to the west of King 

 William's Island, but that all the people landed safely ; he 

 was not one of those who were eye-witnesses of it ; the ship 

 sank, so nothing was obtained by the natives from her ; all 

 that they have got, he said, came from the island in the 

 river. The spear staff appears to have been part of the 

 gunwale of a light boat. One old man, " Oo-na-lee," made 

 a rough sketch of the coast-line with his spear upon the 

 snow, and said it was eight journeys to where the ship sank, 

 pointing in the direction of Cape Felix. I can make nothing 

 out of his rude chart. 



The information we obtained bears out the principal 

 statements of Dr. Rae, and also accounts for the disap- 

 pearance of one of the ships ; but it gives no clue to the 

 whereabouts of the other, nor the direction whence the ships 

 came. One thing has been ascertained by my journey — 

 the crews did not at any time land upon the Boothian shore. 



These Esquimaux were all well clothed in reindeer dresses, 

 and looked clean ; they appeared to have abundance ot 

 provisions, but scarcely a scrap of wood was seen with 

 them which had not come from the lost expedition. Their 

 sledges, with the exception of the one already spoken of, 

 were wretched little affairs, consisting of two frozen rolls of 

 sealskins coated with ice, and attached to each other by 

 bones, which served as the crossbars. The men were stout, 

 hearty fellows, and the women arrant thieves, but all were 

 good-humoured and friendly. The women were decidedly 

 plain j in fact, this term would have been flattering to most 

 of them ; yet there was a degree of vivacity and gentleness 

 in the manners of some that soon reconciled us to these arctic 



