424 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



and were chiefly clad in seal-skin dresses. Among them were two young 

 ^^"V men who were invalids, one of whom was slowly recovering from an illness 

 occasioned by excessive eating, and the other had just fallen sick from the 

 same cause, but was relieved by bleeding. 

 Wed. 2. Captain Lyon returning to the ships on the 2d, and old Nannow with a 

 party of other Esquimaux arriving from Pingitkalik at the same time, I 

 lodged the latter in my cabin, and on the following day accompanied them 

 on their return home ; one or two other families also setting off from Igloolik 

 to join their companions to the southward. I found the Esquimaux situated 

 about twenty-three miles to the southward and eastward of the ships ; the 

 huts being built upon the ice in immediate contact with the beach, and the 

 open water, in which they killed walruses for their subsistence, being distant 

 from them about three miles. The quantity of meat in the huts at this time 

 was so great, that 1 never remember to have seen it more abundant, even 

 in the summer ; and two more walruses were killed during my stay there. 

 Nannow and all his household behaved to us with a degree of kindness and 

 genuine hospitality which nothing could surpass. Indeed the old man 

 seemed to be only apprehensive that he could not do enough for me, and 

 lidgetted about the whole evening in preparing my bed and repairing my dogs' 

 harness, while his wife was mending my boots. Every now and then this 

 worthy creature kept calling his own " igloo" bad, and mine good ; and 

 in the morning he offered me, I believe, in turn, every article belonging to 

 him in return for the presents which I had made him. 

 Frid, 4. In returning on board on the 4th we got out of the road, which was nearly 

 covered with a heavy snow drift that was flying at the time. We were 

 therefore obliged to trust entirely to the instinct of the dogs ; and these 

 sagacious creatures landed us close to the bone-huts at Igloolik, after tra- 

 velling for more than three hours without seeing a single object at a greater 

 distance than two or three hundred yards around us, 



About the first and second weeks in April, the Esquimaux were in the habit 

 of coming up the inlet, to the southward of the ships, to kill the neitiek or 

 small seal which brings forth its young at this season, and probably retires 

 into sheltered places for that purpose *. Besides the old seals which were 



* " The netsek is the only species of seal which remains in the winter under the ice. They 

 form in it large caverns, in which they bring forth their young, two at a time, in March. 

 More than one cavern belongs to one seal, that he may if disturbed in the first, take shelter in 

 the second. No other seal is caught in winter by the Esquimaux" (in Labrador.) — Journal 

 of a Voyage to Ungava Bay by the Missionaries of the Unit as Fratrum, p. 36. 



