Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/188

Rh "While in the tent, Tookoolito brought out the book I had given her, and desired to be instructed. She has got so far as to spell words of two letters, and pronounce most of them properly. Her progress is praiseworthy. At almost every step of advancement, she feels as elated as a triumphant hero in battle. She is far more anxious to learn to read and write than Ebierbing. I feel greater confidence (allowing it were possible to feel so) in the success of my mission since engaging these two natives. They can talk with me in my own vernacular, are both smart, and will be useful each in the department they will be called upon to fill. Tookoolito will especially fill the place of an interpreter, having the capacity for it surpassing Karl Petersen, the Dane, who has been employed as Esquimaux interpreter by various expeditions in search of Sir John Franklin—1st, by Captain Penny, 1850-1; 2d, by Dr. Kane, 1853-5; 3d, by Captain (now Sir Leopold) M'Clintock, 1857-9.

"Tookoolito, I have no doubt, will readily accomplish the differences in language between the Innuits of Boothia and King William's Land, and that of her own people around Northumberland Inlet and Davis's Strait. The pronunciation of the same words by communities of Esquimaux living at considerable distances from each other, and having but little intercourse, is so different that it is with difficulty they are understood one by the other. I should judge, from the very great difference of the language as spoken by the Greenlanders and the natives on the west side of Davis's Strait, that Petersen was of little service to M'Clintock as an Esquimaux interpreter. This conclusion would be arrived at by any one reading the narrative of M'Clintock's interviews with the natives on King Williain's Land. "The Greenlanders have a mixed language consisting of Danish and Esquimaux.... Even the intercourse of the whalers with the Esquimaux around Northumberland Inlet has introduced among them many words that are now in constant use. Tookoolito informed me to-day that the words pickaninny, for infant; cooney, for wife; pussy, for seal;