OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 555 



be so called which always follow the noun) are three ; namely, mi/c (at), as 

 *' Igloomikpoke," he is at the huts ; mee (in, upon, or, sometimes, at), as 

 *' Oomia-mce," in the ship ; " Sikkoomee," upon the ice ; " Amitio-mee," 

 at Amitioke ; and moot (to), as " Ooagna-moot," to the westward. These 

 are always tacked on at the end of the noun, like que in Latin ; and so is the 

 conjunction loo (and), being pronounced with it, as if one word. A com- 

 mon interjection, expressing surprise and admiration, is Hei .' or Hei-i/d ! but 

 a superlative degree of astonishment, mixed with pleasure, is expressed by 

 the words A-tdmna-trdnee ! 



The Esquimaux make much use of winks and nods in conversing. The 

 former, which are always intended to convey a negative meaning, are fre- 

 quently the only reply made to a question, which a bystander might therefore 

 suppose to be still unanswered. A nod, as with us, implies the affirmative. 

 A peculiarity in the idiom of this language Avhich may here be noticed, is 

 the affirmation of a question put in the negative, in order to convey a nega- 

 tive reply, as " Have you not been out fishing to-day?" to which if a nega- 

 tive answer be intended the person says " Yes," or returns a nod, implying 

 *' I have not." I may also mention as another peculiarity in their mode of 

 expressing themselves, a common custom of speaking of a third person, not 

 by his own name but as " the father, husband, brother, ^c, of such a one," 

 and this even when the individual so spoken of is brother to tlie person 

 speaking. Thus Iligliuk would often call her brother Toolooak " the son of 

 Ka-oong-ut." In mentioning names it is not uncommon for them to adopt a 

 mode of pronunciation differing from the correct one, and which (if tlie term 

 can at all be applied to an unwritten language,) may be called colloquial : 

 this consists in a change of the termination, as " Toolooaghioo" for Toolooak, 

 " Oongalaghioo ' for Ooug-a-luk, S,c., and appears equivalent to the familiar 

 diminutives of Christian names common among us. The proper names 

 in common use among these people are borrowed from the most familiar 

 objects in nature, and have no reference to the qualities of the possessor, 

 as among other savages of the Nortli American continent. The names are 

 common to both sexes (so at least we found them in \'arious instances) and 

 are usually given after some of the relatives of the parents, but only on one 

 occasion that we knew of, after the child's own parent. That they consider 

 the sun as feminine and the moon masculine (as, indeed, do the Green- 

 landers,) may be implied from the words " neiya" and " anninga," by which 

 those objects arc respectively called, but which literally mean " sister". 



4 B 2 



