Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/343

322 called the Kitty, which was crushed in the ice of Hudson's Strait in the fall of 1859, and the crew obliged to escape by two boats. Some of the particulars of their history remarkably coincide with the information given to me by the Sekoselar Innuits, as may be seen in the Appendix No. 9.

Another instance of the faithful preservation of traditions among the Innuits, and also of the accuracy of their reports when communicated freely, is to be found in the following additional information given to me by the Sekoselar natives. In seeking to obtain the truth concerning the two boats and white men, I induced Ookgooalloo to sketch me his "country" on paper. He did so, and by that sketch I was convinced that Sekoselar was not the King's Cape of Fox, as I had at one time supposed, but lies east of it, extending along the coast on the north side of Hudson's Strait about two degrees; say from longitude 75° west to longitude 73° west. This, then, would fill the blank on Parry's chart of that locality, and give to it, as the Innuit showed me, a deep bay, flanked by lowlands, with a narrow isthmus between the waters of this bay and the head of Frobisher Bay, thus shown so to be, instead of a "strait." The sketch which was drawn by Ookgooalloo extended from above Fox's farthest down to King's Cape, and thence along the north shore of Hudson's Strait to North Bay, where the upper Savage Islands are situated. "North Bluff" is adjoining that bay, and is called by Innuits Ki-uk-tuk-ju-a, and King's Cape, Noo-ook-ju-a. When the Sekoselar party left home in the previous year, 1860, they travelled, as Innuits generally do, very slow. In the fall they arrived at the head waters of Frobisher Inlet, and Ookgooalloo marked upon his sketch the track they pursued from Sekoselar to the place where they commenced the land route across the isthmus. The head waters of Frobisher Bay they called See-see-ark-ju-a, and into it ran, according to his account (which I afterward found true), a river of fresh water, sometimes very large, and containing salmon in abundance. During the winter of 1860–1 this party of natives made their way down the bay