The Evidence of the Eskimo. 79 



him the following summer, with his family, canoe and outfit, to 

 the northeast as far as the ship went, and then he would try to 

 find this mysterious land of which he had heard so much ; but 

 no one cared to bother with this venturesome Eskimo explorer. 

 So confident was this man of the truth of these reports that he 

 was eager to sail away into the unknown, like another Columlms, 

 in search of an Eskimo paradise. 



In the winter of 1887 several of the most intelligent of the 

 cape Smyth Eskimo came to me about dusk of the evening of 

 February 15 and reported that three strange men had come 

 up from the southwest along the shore ice, and appeared 

 very weary, but on coming opposite the village (which could not 

 have been seen by the travelers before) they quickened their 

 pace, turned abruptly off shore, and disapi^eared in the ice-pack. 

 It was just as the sun was setting, and the strangers could be seen 

 distinctly, but not until they had gotten into the rough ice did 

 it occur to these people standing on the bank that these three 

 wanderers were strangers indeed ; and the more they talked the 

 matter over the more wonderful it seemed that any tired hunter 

 should pass their village without stopping for rest and refresh- 

 ment. It was evident that they turned away in fear when they 

 saw the village and the people standing on the bank. Who 

 could these men be Avho turned away from their hospitable vil- 

 lage, where food and a warm welcome awaited them ? The\'- 

 reasoned that every man on the coast from point Hope to point 

 Barrow was knoAvn to all the others, and knew he would be wel- 

 come to food and shelter. The more they talked, the stranger 

 it seemed, until the conclusion Avas reached that these were " inu 

 tumuktua," (lost people,) and of course their home must be the 

 mysterious land of their fathers' tradition. As a proof of this 

 they said these three men wore white clotbing, which was most 

 likely made of white bear skins, while the Eskimo of the coast 

 wear brown clothing made of reindeer skins. 



Another point in favor of their assertion was that these men 

 had no guns, which fact was noted l)efore they turned off' shore 

 into the pack. They had spears and a coil of seal line, and used 

 the spears as walking-sticks as they plodded wearily along. 



The circumstance was most strange. Every man in the vil- 

 lage of Ootkeavie gave an account of himself that evening, and I 

 took the trouble to send to point Barrow the next morning, but 

 none of them had been in that vicinity or were able to throw an}^ 

 light on the subject. From my knowledge of the Eskimo, I am 



