NOT OF FRANKLIN'S LOST CREWS. 



295 



swered, I concluded in my own mind that the kodlunas must have 

 been at Karmowong in the fall of 1858, and the way the Seko- 

 selar Innuits heard of it was by a native man who had seen the 

 whites and the two boats. 



Now, upon receiving this information, I at length came to the 

 conclusion that it referred to some of Franklin's lost crews. Two 

 boats of white men going toward the great sea, and apparently 

 subsisting upon Innuit food, with reindeer skins for wrappers, and 

 other such material, would seem to indicate that a few of the long- 

 lost voyagers had at last made their way from King William's 

 Land and Boothia toward the goal of their ultimate deliverance. 

 The experience I had already gained of Esquimaux life proved to 

 me what white men could endure under the exigency of circum- 

 stances. There was myself — not reduced to any such absolute 

 necessity as the poor English voyagers undoubtedly must have 

 been — yet capable of sustaining and even of enjoying life among 

 the natives. How much more so, then, the unfortunate men of 

 Franklin's wrecked ships ? To me the matter seemed conclusive, 

 although I could not give implicit confidence to what I had heard 

 until personally testing the truth by examination. 



On my return to the States, however, I find that the whole sto- 

 ry must have had reference to the loss of a British vessel called 

 the Kitty, which was crushed in the ice of Hudson's Strait in the 

 fall of 1859, and the crew obliged to escape by two boats. Some 

 of the particulars of their history remarkably coincide with the in- 

 formation given to me by the Sekoselar Innuits, as may be seen 

 in the Appendix No. 9. 



Another instance of the faithful preservation of traditions 

 among the Innuits, and also of the accuracy of their reports when 

 communicated freely, is to be found in the following additional in- 

 formation given to me by the Sekoselar natives. 



In seeking to obtain the truth concerning the two boats and 

 white men, I induced Ookgooalloo to sketch me his "country" on 

 paper. He did so, and by that sketch I was convinced that Se- 

 koselar was not the King's Cape of Fox, as I had at one time sup- 

 posed, but lies east of it, extending along the coast on the north 

 side of Hudson's Strait about two degrees ; say from longitude 

 75° west to longitude 73° west. This, then, would fill the blank 

 on Parry's chart of that locality, and give to it, as the Innuit 

 showed me, a deep bay, flanked by low lands, with a narrow isth- 

 mus between the waters of this bay and the head of Frobisher 

 Bay, thus shown so to be, instead of a " strait." 



