Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/252

Rh beads and tobacco if she would accompany me to the spot where the relic could be found. With alacrity she drew on her kodlings, and bounded out like a deer, proceeding over the rocks westward, while I exchanged a few more words with the two old men. They informed me that when this "anvil" was last seen it was within ten fathoms of where we then were, but that it had been tumbled off the rocks into the sea. At very low water it could be seen; and they told me that the ice would go away from the place before the ship sailed, and that they would help me get it then.

I then joined Arloodloong, who had waited for me upon the rocks, and she directed my attention to a certain level spot of land not far off, where the natives sometimes build their igloos or erect tupics. She said that, when she had a nu-tarung (babe) yet uborn, the "heavy stone" (anvil) was there, and was used as a seat by herself and many Innuits who at that time had their igloos on the spot. On inquiring which of her sons was the nutarung to which she referred, she replied Kod-la-ar-ling, a young man I supposed to be about twenty-five years of age. Her mother had also seen it there; but, after a time, her people had brought it away to the locality indicated by Artarkparu, and had finally tumbled it into the sea. In the evening Koojesse came home, drawing into his igloo three seals and a fox. One seal, I should think, weighed 200 pounds. The two others were young ones, of but two or three days old, both as white as snow. He caught the mother and one of the young ones in a seal's igloo, which was on the ice and over a seal-hole. Just before sundown I took a walk to the top of the hill at Oopungnewing, and saw Jones's Cape, and many other places where I had previously been. Kingaite's rampart of mountains also stood up in grandeur before me. The Bay of Frobisher was filled with fragments of ice, sending forth thundering noises as the swift tides dashed piece after piece upon each other. I was delighted to see on the north side an unbroken pathway along the coast upward.