Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/230

Rh dogs—are of inestimable value in that country; when well fed up before starting on a journey, they will do hard work for many days in succession without any food. When we reached the summit and began our descent, we found still hard and also dangerous work going down with a loaded sledge and a team of dogs. While Smith hung to the rope made fast to the hind part of the sledge, and Kooksmith kept just ahead of the dogs, whipping them back, I had hold of the fore part of the sledge, to guide it and help keep it back. Notwithstanding all our precautions, the sledge occasionally bounded away over snow-drifts, down steep pitches, now and then plunging dogs and men into one general heap. We had an exciting ride indeed going down on the Field Bay side, the dogs springing with all their might to keep ahead of the flying sledge. We reached the ship at 7.20 The next morning, December 12th, while writing in the after-cabin, Kooksmith came in, and I made further inquiries relative to the place at Tikkoon before written of in connexion with the ship's mast. He took from the table on which I was writing a small memorandum-book, held it just beneath the edge of the table to represent the ship, then took a pencil, one end of which rested on the book, and the other on the table, slightly inclined. The edge of the table represented the bluff at Tikkoon. Then Kooksmith raised up the pencil, which indicated the mast, and thus all was simply and effectively explained; the vessel, when launched, was taken to the bluff of Tikkoon that the masts could there be raised, and set.

Soon after Kooksmith had gone I called Tweroong into the cabin, and asked her, in Innuit, if she knew the story of the white people taking the ship to Tikkoon from Kodlunarn. Tweroong comprehended my question at once. She immediately took my pen and a tobacco-pipe, then bade me hold a book down by the table's edge, and placed on the book and table, at one end of the former, the pen, and at the other the pipe, both inclining against the table's edge, just as in the