OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 



513 



no correct judgment, from our uncertainty as to the length of what they call a 

 s&enik (sleep), or one day's journey, by which alone they could describe to 

 us, with the help of their imperfect arithmetic, the distance from one place to 

 another. But our subsequent knowledge of the coast has cleared up much 

 of this difficulty, affording the means of applying to their hydro-graphical 

 sketches a tolerably accurate scale for those parts which we have not hitherto 

 visited. A great number of these people, who were born at Amitioke and 

 Igloolik, had been to NoowooJc, or nearly as far south as Chesterfield Inlet, 

 which is about the ne plus ultra of their united knowledge in a southerly 

 direction. Not one of them had been by water round to Akkoolee, but 

 several by land ; in which mode of travelling they only consider that 

 country from three to five days' journey from Repulse Bay. Okotook and 

 a few others of the Winter Island tribe had extended their peregrinations 

 a considerable distance to the northward, over the large insular piece of 

 land to which we have applied the name of Cockburn Island ; which they 

 described as high land, and the resort of numerous rein-deer. Here 

 Okotook informed us he had seen icebergs, which these people call by 

 a name (piccdlooydh) having in its pronunciation some affinity to that used 

 in Greenland*. By the information afterwards obtained when nearer the 

 spot, we had reason to suppose this land must reach beyond the seventy- 

 second degree of latitude in a northerly direction ; so that these people pos- 

 sess a personal knowledge of the Continent of America and its adjacent 

 islands, from that parallel to Chesterfield Inlet in 63|°, being a distance of 

 more than five hundred miles reckoned in a direct line, besides the numer- 

 ous turnings and windings of the coast along which they are accustomed to 

 travel. Evverat and some others had been a considerable distance up the 

 Wager River ; but no record had been preserved among them of Captain 

 Middleton's visit to that inlet about the middle of the last century. 



Of the continental shore to the westward of Akkoolee, the Esquimaux 

 invariably disclaimed the slightest personal knowledge ; for no land can be 

 seen in that direction from the hills. They entertain, however, a confused 

 idea that neither Esquimaux nor Indians could there subsist for want of 

 food. Of the Indians they know enough by tradition to hold them in 

 considerable dread, on account of their cruel and ferocious manners. When, 

 on one occasion, we related the circumstances of the inhuman massacre 



* Illuliak. 



3 U 



