154< Account c^tlie lExpedition to Baffin's Bay. 
Captain Sabine, to which we cannot fail to attach a very high 
degree of interest. Although the canoe is in unAersal use 
among the southern Greenlanders, yet this simple apparatus so 
easily constructed, and apparently so necessary to the very ex- 
istence of tribes who are clothed and fed by the produce of the 
sea, appears to be entirely unknown to this remote people. 
They have no word for it in their language ; and though ac- 
customed to see their waves navigated by icebergs, yet they 
are said to have considered the two ships of discovery, as living 
animals swimming upon the surface of the deep. This utter 
ignorance of the art of navigation, and of every other people 
but themselves, will appear the more remarkable, when we con- 
sider, that the islands of Nullok and Ujordlersoak, which were 
examined by Sir Charles Giesecke, and are known to the sou- 
thern Greenlanders, cannot be distant more than thirty miles 
from the spot where Captain Ross discovered the new Esqui- 
maux^. In the manuscript map of Sir Charles, in the possession 
of Thomas Allan, Esq. and which we have now before us, the 
southern side of Nullok is placed in 76° of north latitude, and he 
has laid down seven islands to the north of Nullok, one of which 
reaches as high as 76° 30'. Now, the spot where Captain Ross 
first observed the inhabitants, had little more than 76° of north 
latitude, and it is not likely that Sir Charles Giesecke could 
have erred more than half a degree in his latitude. 
The existence of meteoric iron in the mountains of this de- 
solate region, appears to have been distinctly ascertained by 
Captain Ross. The knives of the Esquimaux, one of which we 
have in our possession, consist of one or more pieces of flattened 
iron, inserted in a groove, made in a piece of bone. This iron 
was at first supposed to have been obtained from nails or iron 
lioops accidentally driven on their shores ; but it appeared from 
a more minute investigation, that it had been knocked by a 
stone from tv/o large masses lying on a hill near the shore, called 
Sowallick, derived no doubt from soivk, a word which signi- 
fies iron. One of these pieces is said to be altogether iron, and 
about two feet in diameter ; while the other was described as a 
hard and dark rock, from which small pieces of iron were ob- 
tained by breaking it, 
'* From this and many other considerations, we cannot permit ourselves to 
lieve that the canoe is unknown to this tribe. 
