360 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



at Bridport Inlet. This was not an accident but resulted from the 

 fact that the previous spring McClure had sent a message to Mel- 

 ville Island to be deposited at Parry's Rock, Winter Harbor, telling 

 the location of his ship, and Kellett's party had found it. 



After consultation the Investigator was abandoned, most of her 

 stores and gear being previously placed in a depot on shore. The 

 crew marched safely over the ice and reached England as passen- 

 gers on other ships. McClure was thus not only the first to dis- 

 cover the Northwest Passage (October, 1850) but the first to make 

 it in the sense that he and his men traversed the entire distance 

 although their ship did not. These were the first men to make 

 a complete circuit of the western hemisphere, for they had come west 

 across the Atlantic, past the south end of South America, north 

 through the Pacific and then east through the devious channels be- 

 tween the islands, and thus home. 



When McClure was in Banks Island he came in no contact with 

 Eskimos and it seems improbable that they knew while he was 

 there of his wintering in Mercy Bay. The spring of 1911 I had from 

 some old men in Prince Albert Sound, Victoria Island, an account 

 of how the Eskimos discovered the abandoned ship and the depot 

 probably two or three years after McClure left them. The food, 

 clothing and the like were of no value to the Eskimos, but there 

 were two classes of articles that were to them beyond price — the 

 iron and other metal work, and the soft wood. 



Familiar as I was with Eskimo customs, I was surprised when 

 my informants made this distinction between the soft and the hard 

 wood. They explained that the hard wood was almost as difficult to 

 make anything out of as caribou antlers and not nearly so durable. 

 In other words, they saw no use for hard wood except to replace 

 bone or horn, and bone or horn was better than hard wood. But 

 the soft wood was a superior variety or the driftwood which they 

 were familiar with and very useful. What they did was to take 

 barrels, no matter what they contained, and break them up with the 

 object of using the hoops. The staves being of hard wood were 

 no more valuable than the food or rum contained in the barrels. 

 Similarly, boxes containing clothing were opened, the clothes thrown 

 away and the boxes made up into arrow shafts and the like. 



When the Eskimos discovered the Investigator the news soon 

 spread east and south and Mercy Bay for a long time became a 

 Mecca to the Eskimos. But eventually, between the rusting of the 

 iron and the pillaging of the Eskimos, the depot was completely 



