350 Return to the Oo-(jlU Isles. [inny, iscs. 



necessary, as their supplies, made up at first for fifteen days only, had 

 no\v been drawn upon nearly three weeks. Finding- an easy passage 

 over the land to the creek, by the 6tli of May they had rapidly fol- 

 lowed it down, and, passing through Hooper Inlet, after some delays 

 occasioned b}^ the softness of the snow, arrived at the Oo-glit Islands 

 earh' on the 8th, having in fifteen hours accomplished a journey of fifty- 

 seven statute miles from their last lialting-place on the ice of the iidet. 

 On this journey the ordy living thing seen was a crow. They had 

 found that the fox which had been set up on the snow pillar by Koo- 

 loo-a had been carried off by some Innuit, who had substituted for it 

 the shoulder-blade of a walrus ; tliis dried meat was relished by the 

 hungry return party. When coming near the Oo-glit Isles, Hall 

 "looked out upon a long impenetrable cloud of blackness overhang- 

 ing the iceless waters of Fox Channel. The wind blowing fresh from 

 the south and tlie aurora actually working on the face of the black- 

 ness, made it seem, as we approached this world of blackness, as though 

 we were going right straight into the lower regions in the literal signifi- 

 cant sense of the word." 



The population of the village was now again increased by the 

 cominsr in of several new families from the northeast to see the 

 stranger. The first news which he heard was the loss of Ag-loo-ka 

 and liis friend E-nu-men, who were irrecoverably swept away while 

 walrusing on the ice; the next was that another native had further 

 accounts to give him of Kia!s strange white man. Hall determined 

 to defer a proposed geographical exploration of the strait and go 

 over to Tern Island to see this man. Whatever judgments may 

 now be ])assed upon his persistence in this search foi- Franklin's sur- 

 vivnrs, liis own words at the time were, "No man, knowing what I do, 



