Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/231

212 illustration shown by Kooksmith. She next raised one of the mimic masts to a perpendicular position, I still holding the book, and then the other. Taking up a pencil, I also raised that, and asked her if there were not three masts. To my question she answered decisively "Argi"—No; adding, "Muk-ko! muk-ko!" meaning Two. I then recalled to mind a remark made to me by Koojesse the previous winter, when we were passing Oopungnewing at a distance from that bluff; "There," said he, "the place where kodlunas make or put in masts." I thought the remark preposterous at the time, and gave but little attention to it. Another curious point in connexion with the matter of the ship's masts was this: When conversing with some of the natives after the discoveries above narrated, I learned that the name "Ne-pou-e-tie sup-bing" had been given to the bluff spoken of. On making closer inquiries, I found that this was a phrase coined for the purpose of expressing a certain idea, as was the case with the word Kodlunarn. Its translation is, "To set up masts." The significance of these discoveries with reference to Frobisher's expedition, and the bearing they had, to my mind, on more recent matters, will be seen by the following extract from my diary at the close of December 19th:—

"How long it does take to gather in all of the links of this chain three hundred years old! I am convinced that were I on King William's Land and Boothia, and could I live there two years, I could gather facts relative to Sir John Franklin's expedition—gather facts from the Innuits—that would astonish the civilized world. How easy to go back a score of years or so, and get truthful history from among the Innuits, compared with what it is to plunge into the history of near three centuries, and draw out the truth! May I live to see the day when I can visit King William's Land and Boothia, and secure the full history, as it must exist among the Innuits there, of that expedition!"