32 TRANSACTIONS iSgg-'oo 



also doe the women, not differing in fashion from the men, but 

 the women are marked in the faces with bleue streakes down the 

 cheeks and round about the eies," — from all which it is apparent 

 that sealskin coats, made to look like men's, and painted cheeks 

 are no modern fashion among the women of this continent. The 

 first wearers and users, our comely sisters of the northern fringe 

 of Canada, set the fashion no one knows how many centuries ago. 



" On the 2oth day," continues Frobisher, " we wayed and 

 went to the east side of the island," where they saw the Eskimo's 

 houses. One of the natives returned to the Gabriel with them 

 and to him they gave a " belt and a jack-knife and then ordered 

 five men to put him ashore at a rocke and not among the company 

 (of the Eskimos) but their wilfuleness was such that they would 

 goe to them and so were taken themselves and we lost our boate. ' ' 



' ' The next day in the morning we stoode in near the shore 

 and shotte off a fauconet and sounded our trumpet but we could 

 heare nothing of our men. This sound we therefore called the 

 Five Men's Sound." 



The fate of the five men is unknown ; whether they settled 

 down and took to themselves Eskimo wives and left a white strain 

 in the blood of the natives or whether they were eaten without 

 salt or roasting no one knows ; no trace of them was ever found. 



Trumpet Island was probably so called because of the echo 

 of the sounding trumpet the island's precipitous sides returned as 

 the messmates of the five abducted seamen sought to inform the 

 unfortunate quintet of their whereabouts. 



This first acquaintance with our brothers and sisters of the 

 seal-skin garment has not been- improved or deepened since. We 

 know in a general sort of a way that there are about 4,000 of 

 them included in our population and even that is an estimate now 

 30 years old. Missionaries have gone from Canada to the heathen 

 of Asia and Africa but to these little people of the land of the 

 white bear we have paid scant or no attention. Dr. Richardson 

 and McClure and Armstrong found them verj^ unwilling to 

 cvdtivate closer jelations with the Kabloonas, or white men, " be- 

 cause the white men gave them water that killed them," to which 

 fateful gift they have decided objection. Possibly by preserving 

 a ' ' splendid isolation ' ' they have increased and multiplied. But 

 they have been left to their paganism by the mission societies, 

 almost their only point of contact with white men being at 

 Herscheir Island near Mackenzie River where whaling ships of ten 



