418 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



March and P ro P er ' * s not always strictly attended to ; for several went out to the 

 ^ fishery the day following Ootooguak's death, and one or two came to the 

 ships within three days. Some individuals, notwithstanding the serious 

 inconvenience of this practice, adhered to it more scrupulously, and Toole- 

 mak could by no means be prevailed on to part with a dog for which I had 

 bargained, till the five days were completed. When however there are no 

 relatives at hand to observe the practice, as in the case of the unfortunate 

 Kaga, it is altogether neglected ; so that its non-observance is only perhaps 

 considered to affect the dead, without having any influence over the living. 



Messrs. Crozier and Ross, having spent one or two days in accompanying 

 some of the Esquimaux on their fishing excursions, found that the same floe of 

 " young" and weak ice as before still opposed an insuperable obstacle to the 

 catching of walruses. Mr. Ross succeeded in killing a single dovekey, 

 which proved extremely curious from the whiteness of its plumage. It 

 was probably on account of the present unfavourable state of the ice for 

 the walrus-fishery, that several other families removed, before the end of 

 March, to Pingitkcdik, where these animals were equally abundant, and more 

 easily procured ; for the Esquimaux do not acknowledge the truth of our 

 English proverb, that " enough is as good as a feast." Previously to their 

 Wed. 26. departure, several of them, with their usual cunning, paid two or three " last 

 visits" to the ships on as many successive days, having found by experience 

 that some extra presents were made them on such occasions. We heard 

 about this time of a child six or seven years of age having recently been 

 drowned, by accidentally falling into a hole in the ice made for soaking their 

 seal-skins. 



At the close of the month of March we were glad to find that its mean tem- 

 perature, being — 19°. 75, when taken in conjunction with those of January 

 and February, appeared to constitute a mild winter for this latitude. There 

 were besides, some other circumstances which served to distinguish this 

 winter from any preceding one we had passed in the ice. One of the 

 most remarkable of these was the frequent occurrence of hard well-de- 



Frid. 28. fined clouds, a feature we had hitherto considered as almost unknown in 

 the winter-sky of the polar regions. It is not improbable, that these may 

 have in part owed their origin to a large extent of sea keeping open to the 

 south-eastward throughout the winter, though they not only occurred with 



Mon. 31. the wind from that quarter, but also with the colder weather usually accom- 

 panying north-westerly breezes. About the time of the sun's re-appearance, 



