OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 



437 



nature of all these materials led us to suppose that it must have been pro- 1 se- 

 cured from some vessel wrecked or damaged on the coast ; and this suspicion v_^0 

 was on the following day confirmed by our obtaining information that, at a 

 place called Akkoodneak, a single day's journey beyond Toonoonek, two ships 

 like ours had been driven on shore by the ice, and that the people had 

 gone away in boats equipped for the purpose, leaving one ship on her beam 

 ends and the other upright, in which situation the vessels were supposed still 

 to remain *. 



We observed on this occasion, as on our first arrival at Igioolik, that the 

 new Esquimaux were obliged to have recourse to the others to interpret to 

 them our meaning, which circumstance, as it still appeared to me, was to 

 be attributed as before to our speaking a kind of broken Esquimaux that 

 habit had rendered familiar to our old acquaintance, rather than to any 

 essential difference in the true languages of the two people. 



Toolemak, having some time before promised to accompany me to the 

 fishing-place, taking with him his wife, together with his sledge, dogs, and 

 tent, made his appearance from Ooglit on the 23d, bringing however only 

 the old lady and abundance of meat. Having lent him a tent and two 

 of our dogs, and hired others to complete his establishment, we set out 

 together at five A.M. on the 24th, my own party consisting of Mr. Crozier Tues. 24. 

 and a seaman from each ship. Arriving at Khemig towards noon, we found 

 among the islands that the ice was quite covered with water, owing probably 

 to the radiation of heat from the rocks. The weather indeed proved in- 

 tensely hot this day, the thermometer in the shade at the ships being as high as 

 51°, and the land in this neighbourhood preventing the access of wind from 

 any quarter. The travelling being good beyond this, we arrived within four 

 or five miles of the head of Quilliam Creek at ten P.M., where we pitched 

 the tents for the -night. In this day's journey ten dogs had drawn my sledge 

 a distance of forty statute miles since the morning, the weight on the sledge 

 being about twelve hundred pounds and half of the road very indifferent. 

 It is the custom of the Esquimaux, even when meat is most abundant, to 

 feed these invaluable animals only once a day, and that in the evening, 

 which they consider to agree with them better than more frequent meals ; 

 we always observed the same practice with ours, and found that they per- 

 formed their journeys the better for it. 



* We have since heard that these ships were the Dexterity of Leith and the Aurora of 

 Hull, which were wrecked on the 28th of August 1821, about the latitude of 72°. 



