LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
285 
basin. The blood was flowing on the ground, and Ulunena 
brought not the basin. The basin! repeated Ooblooraiak, in the 
most authoritative tone;— Kab — Kab — Kabloona, stammered 
Ulunena, and looked as pale, as a smutty smoked Esquimaux 
could look— Ooblooraiak sprang from the ground, the bloody 
knife in his hand, and with a stentorian voice roared out, Nuk- 
huckpoowuknutcheuk! !* It was a sound at which Ulunena 
shook with terror, and had she been educated at an English 
boarding school, where the pupils are taught how to faint with 
grace and elegance, there is little doubt but that she would have 
displayed some of the evolutions, circumvolutions, and revolutions 
which are practised on those occasions; nor, as the novelists have 
it, could she apply her handkerchief (not having one) to her eyes, 
and rush out of the hut con strepito —but she did what every other 
Esquimaux woman would have done on such a terrific occasion, 
when her husband stood before her with a bloody knife in his 
hand, and his utterance choaked with rage, she threw herself on 
her knees, not for the purpose of imploring the pardon of her 
offended husband, but as being the posture most convenient and 
proper to enable her to crawl out of the hut, and seek a refuge 
in the hut of Kakkaakenu, her coadjutor and accomplice in the 
atrocious act. Tookoopoke ! Tookoopoke /+ now sounded through 
the whole village ; like rabbits when hunted out of their holes by 
the ferrets, from the opening of every hut were seen crawling 
the inmates, to learn the cause of the dreadful commotion. 
to indite an epistle to his Inamorata, this would appear at the commencement as synonymous with 
our, “ My dearest life,” or “My darling love.” 
* This word is decidedly untranslatable; but, by a subjoined note we are informed, that it con¬ 
tains the essence of all the curses of Ernuiphus, and the quintessence of all the anathematising 
curses of the Roman Catholic Church. The G-me of the English, the F.r of the French. 
and the S.t of the Germans, are in comparison to it, epithets of mildness. 
t The Greeks had no word in their language for parricide, as it was a crime they did not sup¬ 
pose a human being could commit; on the same principle, the Esquimaux have no word in their 
language for murder, it being a crime unknowu amongst them. The signification of Tookoopoke 
is “ kill he does,” as in their language, the auxiliary verb always follows the active, and the verb 
follows the noun, as Keilukpoke, “ knot he ties,” Kakleekpoke, “ breeches, he puts on his.” 
