Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/341

320 leading up to a subject can any information be obtained from them. Thus it was not until the following day, when a letter arrived from Captain B, that I learned of these Esquimaux being acquainted with some facts concerning white people dying at Sekoselar. The captain had heard it so reported by other natives, and wrote to me that I might make some inquiries about it. On the receipt of this letter I immediately sent for Ebierbing and Tookoolito to come on board and act as interpreters. I then invited the two Sekoselar men (by name Ook-goo-al-loo and Too-loo-ka-ah) into the cabin, and opened a conversation, in which both participated. Tookoolito was the principal speaker, and she interpreted very well my own questions and their answers. That her interpretation was correct, and equally so their information, has, since my return home, been proved by facts, which at that time I was unacquainted with. Indeed, I then misapplied the story, firmly believing it to bear upon the lost Franklin Expedition. What that story was may be seen in the following substance of all which was related to me through Tookoolito:— The Sekoselar Innuits said that "no kodlunas (whites) had ever been to or ever died at Sekoselar, but two years previous to this time two kodluna boats, with many oars (meaning many oarsmen), arrived at a place farther down (at Karmowong )—so they, the Sekoselars, had heard—and there stopped awhile; how long, whether one or two days, was not known. That these kodlunas had plenty guns, plenty powder, plenty shot, plenty balls, and plenty small casks of provision. They had many tuktoo skins (reindeer furs) to wrap around their bodies and their feet. "To make their boats not so deep in the water, the kodlunas (whites) took out amasuadlo (a great many) balls and placed them on a rock. The Innuits at that place, and in the