IGLOOS IN RUINS. 



183 



a melting down. Nearly every igloo is in ruins, owing to the un- 

 expected storm of rain. Some have fallen, others about to. The 

 men Xnnuits are busily engaged in erecting outer walls, filling in 

 snow between the old and the new. I visited nearly every hab- 

 itation, and found the natives exclaiming ' pe-ong-e-too ! pe-ong-e- 

 too !' — bad ! bad ! L Karg-toon 1 — very hungry. 



"At Ebierbing and Tookoolito's there was great distress. Their 

 igloo was nearly destroyed. In the night the whole of the dome 

 had fallen in, covering their bed, furs, dresses, etc., in wet snow. 

 Ebierbing was busy in making a canvas tent over the ruins, while 

 Tookoolito cleared out the snow from beneath. He was wet 

 through, and had not a dry skin upon his back, having been out 

 all the morning trying to save his igloo from the almost univer- 

 sal ruins around him. 



" Dec. 22d. Raining hard throughout this day, with occasional 

 sleet and snow. Tookoolito visited the ship, and upon her return 

 I let her have an umbrella, which, though she well knew the use 

 of it, was really a novelty to others of her people, who consid- 

 ered it a ' walking tent? 



"The extraordinary mildness of the season has caused a most 

 sad state of things among the natives. They can not obtain their 

 accustomed food by sealing, as the ice and cold weather alone 

 give them the opportunity. Hence in many of the igloos I have 

 seen great distress, and in some I noticed kelp (seaweed) used for 

 food. 



" Whenever I visited the natives, such small quantities of food 

 as I could spare from my own slender but necessary stock were 

 taken to them, and on one occasion I gave Tookoolito a handful 

 of pressed ' cracklings' which I had brought with me from Cincin- 

 nati. They were given me by a friend there for dog-food, and I 

 can now record the fact that Cincinnati pressed ' cracklings' made 

 as rich a soup as ever I had eaten." 



The preceding extracts from my diary about the weather, and 

 its effects upon the condition of things around me, will show that 

 almost the very existence of these children of the icy North de- 

 pends upon the seasons being uniform with the time of year. The 

 high temperature we had experienced, however, did not long con- 

 tinue. A few days afterward, on the 30th of December, the ther- 

 mometer was down to zero ; and on the 5th of January it was 

 sixty degrees below freezing point ! The bay and harbor had 

 again been coated over with solid ice, and parties of Innuits were 



