294 



ARCTIC RESEARCH EXPEDITION. 



On the receipt of this letter I immediately sent for Ebierbing 

 and Tookoolito to come on board and act as interpreters. I then 

 invited the two Sekoselar men (by name Ook-goo-al-loo and Too- 

 loo-ka-ah) into the cabin, and opened a conversation, in which 

 both participated. Tookoolito was the principal speaker, and she 

 interpreted very well my own questions and their answers. That 

 her interpretation was correct, and equally so their information, 

 has, since my return home, been proved by facts, which at that 

 time I was unacquainted with. Indeed, I then misapplied the 

 story, firmly believing it to bear upon the lost Franklin Expedi- 

 tion. What that story was may be seen in the following sub- 

 stance of all which was related to me through Tookoolito : 



The Sekoselar Innuits said that "no kodlunas (whites) had 

 ever been to or ever died at Sekoselar, but two years previous to 

 this time two kodluna boats, with many oars (meaning many oars- 

 men), arrived at a place farther down (at Karmowong*) — so they, 

 the Sekoselars, had heard — and there stopped a while ; how long, 

 whether one or two days, was not known. That these kodlunas 

 had plenty guns, plenty powder, plenty shot, plenty balls, and 

 plenty small casks of provision. They had many tuktoo skins 

 (reindeer furs) to wrap around their bodies and their feet. 



" To make their boats not so deep in the water, the kodlunas 

 (whites) took out amasuadlo (a great many) balls and placed them 

 on a rock. The Innuits at that place, and in the vicinity where 

 the kodlunas landed, thought the balls were soft stones. They 

 supposed the whites had come from ships that had been lost or 

 wrecked in the ice. 



" When these whites left the land they went farther down to- 

 ward the big sea. 



" The whites had arrived at Karmowong in the fall of the year, 

 one day when the weather was very bad, wind blowing very 

 hard, and snowing fast. It was very cold too. 



"The Karmowong Innuits thought the whites had obtained 

 their tuktoo furs of the Sekoselar men. The skins had on the 

 winter coat of the tuktoo. ISTone of the kodlunas died there. 

 They all went away in boats, and the Innuits never saw or heard 

 of them more." 



From farther questions that I put, and which were readily an- 



* I think Karmowong to be the islands called by Baffin "Middle Savage Islands," 

 north side of Hudson's Strait. Indeed, it may also include quite an extensive bay 

 in that neighborhood, which the Esquimaux sketched for me as being there- 



