234 RAE'S STATEMENTS CONFIRMED. Chap. XII. 



Next morning, 4tli Marcli, several natives 

 came to us again. I bought a spear 64 feet 

 long from a man who told Petersen distinctly 

 that a ship having three masts had been crushed 

 by the ice out in the sea to the west of King 

 William's Island, but that all the people landed 

 safely ; he was not one of those who were eye- 

 witnesses of it ; the ship sunk, so nothing was ob- 

 tained by the natives from her ; all that they have 

 got, he said, came from the island in the river. 

 The spear staff appears to have been part of the 

 gunwale of a light boat. One old man, " Oo-na- 

 lee," made a rough sketch of the coast-line with 

 his spear upon the snow, and said it was eight 

 journeys to where the ship sank, pointing in the 

 direction of Cape Felix. I can make nothing 

 out of his rude chart. 



The information we obtained bears out the 

 principal statements of Dr. Rae, and also ac- 

 counts for the disappearance of one of the ships ; 

 but it gives no clue to the whereabouts of the 

 other, nor the direction whence the ships came. 

 One thing is tolerably certain — the crews did 

 not at any time land upon the Boothian shore. 



These Esquimaux were all well clothed in 

 reindeer dresses, and looked clean ; they ap- 

 peared to have abundance of provisions, but 

 scarcely a scrap of wood was seen amongst them 



