472 



ARCTIC RESEARCH EXPEDITION. 



ship in the Innuit country where trees did not grow, where there 

 was no wood, no iron, no materials of any sort. I told Tookoo- 

 lito to say to him that it sounded very strange to me to hear about 

 ship-building there. Tookoolito smiled, and did as requested. 

 The old Innuit smiled also, and then proceeded to explain how it 

 was, saying that the ship was built out of material carried there 

 by hocllunas. I then asked him if there was any thing on Kod- 

 lunarn now that the kodlunas who built the ship left there. The 

 old man answered : 



" Ar-me-larng, amasuadlo !" (Yes, a great many.) "What were 

 they?" "Little red pieces" of something; he didn't know what 

 they were. "Any thing else?" "Yes, little black pieces, a great 

 many ;" he didn't know what they were for. There was nothing 

 like them in the Innuit country ; but these black things were on 

 Niountelik, not on Kodlunarn. I then asked if he had seen any 

 thing else. At first he said he had not, but, on thinking a while, 

 he said he had seen " heavy stone" — one small one at Tikkoon, 

 one large one, he thought, on Oopungnewing. The last he saw 

 four years before, and he said the Innuits used to try their strength 

 in lifting it. He could lift it as high as his knees, but no higher. 



I asked him if any one could see the place where the kodlunas 

 built the ship. He replied, "Yes;" and then proceeded to show 

 what kind of a place it was. A snow-block was in the bottom of 

 the igloo, having been brought in for making snow-water. I told 

 Tookoolito to have him take a snow-knife, and show us what kind 

 of a place the ship was built in. The old man took the snow- 

 knife and commenced trimming the block, and then proceeded to 

 chip out a trench, comparatively wide, and deep at the edge, but 

 shallow and narrow at its termination. He then swept his knife 

 around the block of snow to represent the location of the trench 

 in the island. I asked him what was the character of the land 

 where they dug the trench. As I asked this question, I put my 

 finger at the bottom of the model trench before us. The answer 

 astonished me, it being the very reverse of what I expected, for I 

 knew the bottom of the excavation on Kodlunarn to be of stone. 

 The old man's answer was that it was soft. By this I understood 

 him to mean that it was like sand or loam ; but to a repetition of 

 the question, he answered, " Soft — very soft — same as wood all fall- 

 ing in pieces ; the tarrio — sea — came up into the trench where the 

 wood was." 



Here was a deeply-interesting fact unexpectedly disentombed. 



