SPOTTED BOY. — BREVOORT ISLAND. — CAPE MURCHISON. 33 1 



fore he was born, the poor infant came into the world marked all 

 over with snow-white spots and black spots, just like a kou-oo-lik, 

 a large spotted kind of seal. The father, looking upon this spot- 

 ted child as a monster — a living curse in his family — determined 

 to get rid of him, and accordingly conveyed the boy to Ki-hi-tuTc- 

 ju-a, i. e., Long Island, called by me Brevoort Island,* the southern 

 point of which is Cape Murchison. f This island was quite desti- 

 tute of means of subsistence, and, to appearance, the poor boy was 

 left there to perish by starvation. Strange to say, however, Etu 

 lived on. He succeeded in catching partridges with his hands, an 

 act never before or since known to have been done by Innuits. 

 Thus the summer passed on, and winter approached. Still he 

 lived, subsisting upon whatsoever he could find in the shape of 

 food, a wild hermit-boy, on a solitary, almost unapproachable isl- 

 and, far from his fellow-beings. Eelease came to him in the fol- 

 lowing manner : 



One day a party of Innuits visited the island, and, to their as- 

 tonishment, saw this young child standing upon a rock looking at 

 them. He was like a statue, and they, knowing the place to be 

 uninhabited, could hardly tell what to think of it. At length 

 they went toward him, and he, seeing them kindly disposed, at 

 once rushed into their arms, and was thus saved from the cruel 

 death intended for him by his inhuman father. 



Since then he had grown to manhood, being, when I saw him, 

 about twenty-five years old. He had had three wives, none of 

 which remained to him. The first was accidentally drowned; 

 the second was taken away by her mother ; and the third — her fate 

 I never learned. His intended fourth, Ookoodlear, who was only 

 about thirteen years old, escaped in the way I have mentioned. 



Etu's fortune was a hard one. Few liked him. He seemed to 

 be tabooed from his youth, and as if always destined to be an out- 

 cast, because Nature had put marks upon his body, making him 

 to differ from others of his kind. Whether it was the knowledge 

 of this isolation that made him a lazy and indifferent hunter, I 

 can not say ; but certain it is, such was the character he had, and 

 it redounds to the credit of Ugarng that he gave the poor fellow 

 the hand of friendship in the way he did. 



* So named after J. Carson Brevoort, of Brooklyn, New York. This is a very- 

 long and prominent island south of the cape, on the west side of the entrance to 

 Northumberland Inlet ; its southern cape — Cape Murchison — is nearly on a paral- 

 lel with the north entrance to Cornelius Grinnell Bay. 



t Named after Sir Roderick I. Murchison, of London, England. Cape Murchi- 

 son, the south extreme of Brevoort Island, is in lat. 63° 13' N., long. 63° 55' W. 



