Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/221

202 where there was no wood, no iron, no materials of any sort. I told Tookoolito to say to him that it sounded very strange to me to hear about ship-building there. Tookoolito smiled, and did as requested. The old Innuit smiled also, and then proceeded to explain how it was, saying that the ship was built out of material carried there by kodlunas. I then asked him if there was any thing on Kodlunarn now that the kodlunas who built the ship left there. The old man answered:— "Ar-me-larng, amasuadlo!" (Yes, a great many.) "What were they?" "Little red pieces" of something; he didn't know what they were. "Anything else?" "Yes, little black pieces, a great many;" he didn't know what they were for. There was nothing like them in the Innuit country; but these black things were on Niountelik, not on Kodlunarn. I then asked if he had seen anything else. At first he said he had not, but, on thinking a while, he said he had seen "heavy stone"—one small one at Tikkoon, one large one, he thought, on Oopungnewing. The last he saw four years before, and he said the Innuits used to try their strength in lifting it. He could lift it as high as his knees, but no higher.

I asked him if any one could see the place where the kodlunas built the ship. He replied, "Yes;" and then proceeded to show what kind of a place it was. A snow-block was in the bottom of the igloo, having been brought in for making snow-water. I told Tookoolito to have him take a snow-knife, and show us what kind of a place the ship was built in. The old man took the snow-knife and commenced trimming the block, and then preceeded to chip out a trench, comparatively wide, and deep at the edge, but shallow and narrow at its termination. He then swept his knife around the block of snow to represent the location of the trench in the island. I asked what was the character of the land where they dug the trench. As I asked this question, I put my finger at the bottom of the model trench before us. The answer astonished me, it being the very reverse of what I expected, for I knew the bottom of the excavation of Kodlunarn to be of stone. The old man's answer was that it was