WINTER QUARTERS 155 



to us to talk, to smoke, and to eat. We or rather Mr. Leffing- 

 well now understood their language very well, and Sachawachick 

 told us many things, amongst others about Captain Maguire, 

 who had wintered at Point Barrow in 1851; he told us the 

 captain's name, and mentioned the native who was accidentally 

 killed by the gunner of H.M.S. Plover. Events of this kind are 

 the milestones in an Eskimo's reckoning of time, and when, for 

 instance, Sachawachick was asked how old he was, he would say 

 that he was not yet born when the Plover wintered in Elson 

 Bay. 



When the Eskimos came down to the ship Mr. LefBngwell 

 always took the opportunity of increasing his Eskimo vocabulary, 

 and he was getting along very well. Although the Eskimo 

 language is very hard to learn properly, we very quickly picked 

 up a speaking acquaintance with it, and we all managed to 

 make ourselves fairly well understood, but whenever complica- 

 tions of any kind whatever arose we had to resort to Mr. 

 Leffingwell and his more systematic investigations of the Eskimo 

 tongue to find out what was meant. 



However, these people were far easier to understand than a 

 tribe of natives who had not been in contact with white people 

 would have been. They had learnt, when speaking to white 

 men, always to use the simplest and the least difficult words in 

 their otherwise rather complicated language. This, of course, 

 was very nice for us who did not study their language, but it 

 caused Mr. Leffingwell considerable annoyance that the Eskimos 

 could not be made to understand that they should talk properly 

 to him and a kind of pidgin Eskimo to the rest of us. Our 

 friend Sachawachick was a great help to Mr. Leffingwell, and 

 each time he came down to the ship he was detained for an hour 

 or two in order to satisfy Mr. Leffingwell's philological curiosity. 



Thuesen was of great assistance to us in our preparations. 

 He could do anything, sew a tent or clothing, lash the sledges, 

 and do the numerous odds and ends for which we could find 

 no one else. Consequently he was greatly in demand just then. 



Mr. Storkersen, with the assistance of Hicky and Fiedler, 

 had the sledges ready on the igth. The work was done very 

 neatly and carefully, and we had nothing now to do but to load 

 and start. 



A westerly gale blowing from February 18 till February 21 



