Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/98

Rh the island of my visitation to-day, was the identical one on which Frobisher landed with the object of establishing winter quarters for the colony of a hundred men that he brought here in his last voyage, to wit, in 1578! "The account which Frobisher gave of his discovery was so indefinite that the civilized world has remained in doubt for nearly three hundred years of its locality. Even to this day geographers know not its location. Some one has made a guess, and approximated to the fact—simply approximated. In a few days I trust I shall return, either confirming it to be a 'strait,' as it is called, or with the full conviction that this water is a bay, which I believe it to be, from what the Innuits have told me.

"I now resume the incidents of this day. A few minutes after Koo-ou-le-arng's arrival at the coal-heap, I proceeded to investigate more searchingly into the probable time it had been there, and all other matters pertaining to it.

"I first dug down in the centre to ascertain its depth; found it to be one foot in the thickest part, and thinning off to an edge at a distance of five to ten feet from the centre. On walking around, I found that the winds, mostly those from the northeast, north, and northwest, had scattered the coal (chiefly small pieces) over a great extent of ground. In fact, wind from the opposite points would carry such coal as it could lick up into the water of 'Countess of Warwick's Sound,' as Frobisher denominated the water at the northwest, north, northeast, east, and southeast of Niountelik, for the coal deposit is close by the bank bordering the sound.

"To satisfy myself fully that this coal must have been where it lies for a great many years, I dug around and beneath the clods of thickly-matted grass—around and beneath stunted willows and 'crowberry' shrubs—around and beneath mosses. Wherever I made these excavations I found coal. Many places overgrown with grass I examined, digging down a depth of several inches, and overturning sods exhibiting coal at the base, then a layer of sand and coal, then another layer of two or three inches of sand, overtopped by interlocked