Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/222

Rh soft. By this I understood him to mean that it was like sand or loam; but to a repetition of the question, he answered, "Soft—very soft—same as wood all falling in pieces; the tarrio—sea—came up into the trench where the wood was."

Here was a deeply-interesting fact unexpectedly disentombed. I had previously found at Kodlunarn several pieces of wood at the bottom of this trench, the larger portion of it being of the character described by this old Innuit. It was beneath stone that had fallen from the bank, the top of the stick being dry, while the base was imbedded firmly in rocks and sand. The old Innuit said that a good deal of something soft (wood) used to be in the bottom of the trench. (Manuscript records of Frobisher's expedition now in the British Museum, but seen by me only since my return, show that quantities of timber, carried out for the purpose of building a fort, were buried at the bottom of one of his mines.) Being questioned farther, the old man said that only three men built the ship; the others stood around "all same as captains." The Innuits did not help make the ship, but they helped the kodlunas get the ship down into tarrio.

On December 15th, the thermometer being 20° below zero, the wind light from the northwest, the weather a little cloudy, I took an early breakfast of whale-steaks and coffee, and at 5.45 was on my sledge, to which were harnessed eight dogs, the place of my destination being Jones's Cape. I had with me my Innuit dog-driver "Kooksmith" and young Smith. Shortly after starting, and upon getting into some snow saturated with sea-water, a surprising phenomenon was seen. When the dogs put their feet into the snow and water, it was like stepping into a flood of molten gold, and the phosphorescent light thus produced was not confined to the space beneath the dogs and the sledge, but spread itself around, and continued for several seconds.

In an hour and twenty minutes we crossed the bay, and reached the land on the other side; in an hour more we were at the crest of Bayard Taylor Pass, and in less than another hour had safely accomplished the steep descent, and were on