Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/269

250 of tuktoo paunch, entrails of seals and walrus, whale skin and krang, besides drinking train-oil and blood. In the previous December, when on my trip to Jones's Cape after skins, I saw Toolookaah and his wife, and was both surprised and gratified to learn that she had an infant; it was a girl of only two weeks, and had been named Ek-ker-loon, Toolookaah was at this time, as I thought, sixty years old, and his wife not less than fifty-five years. When I now saw the parents again on this journey of which I am writing, I inquired for the child, and received the mournfully sad reply, "Tuk-a-woke," meaning, it is dead.

I should add to this record the news I received at the same time of the death of my never-to-be-forgotten friend Tweroong. Oo-soo-kar-lo, son of old Petato, told me that she had died several weeks before. Some days later I obtained the details of her death, and they were truly heart-rending. When her husband, "Miner," and her son, "Charley" removed from Oopungnewing a few weeks before this time, Tweroong was unable to walk, and had to be carried on a sledge. After going a few miles up Frobisher Bay, an igloo was built for her, when she was placed in it, without any food, and with no means of making a fire-light, and then abandoned to die alone. A few days after some Innuits visited the igloo and found her dead. The next day, April 19th, in the afternoon, I received an invitation from old Petato to come into her igloo and partake of a seal-feast. Taking Henry Smith along with me, I accompanied Oosookarlo to the place indicated. We found Petato seated on her dais, with an immense stone pot hanging over the full blazing ikkumer; the pot was filled with smoking-hot seal and seal-soup; Sharkey, Kopeo, his wife and infant, and several young Innuits, were there, awaiting the "good time coming." Petato, the presiding genius, took out a piece of the seal with her hands and gave it to me, doing the same by the others. Before I had half-finished mine, the old lady handed me another and a larger piece; but, without difficulty, I did ample justice to all of it. Henry declared he never