Of the "rod of iron about four feet long, supposed to have been at one time galvanized," which was brought home in 1856 by Captain Patterson, and forwarded to the Admiralty, I could obtain no information. The natives were shown galvanized iron, and said they had never seen any before; if their countrymen had any, it must have come from the whalers; none like it was found in the wrecks. Rod-iron is very valuable to Esquimaux for spears and lances, and narwhals' horns very tempting to the seamen, not only as valuable curiosities, but the ivory is worth half a crown a pound; and I have but little doubt that many of the things said to have been stolen by the natives were fraudulently bartered away by the sailors. That there was no galvanized iron on board any of the Government searching-ships, nor in the missing expedition which sailed from England as far back as 1845, I am almost certain. But is it certain that this rod was galvanized? The natives gave Captain Patterson to understand that they got it from the wreck to the north.

In July, 1854, Captain Deuchars was at Pond's Bay, and many natives visited his ship, coming over the ice on twelve or fourteen sledges made of ship's planking. Now at this time Sir Edward Belcher's ships were still frozen up in Barrow Strait. My own impression is that the natives whom Captain Deuchars communicated with in 1854 were visitors at Pond's Bay—certainly from the southward—and probably attracted by the barter recently grown up at that whaling rendezvous. Having discovered the use of the saws obtained by barter from our whalers, they had successfully applied them to the stout planking of the old wrecks, which they could not have stripped off with any tools previously in their possession.

TRAVELS OF ESQUIMAUX.

That the various tribes, or rather groups of families, occasionally visit each other, sometimes for change of hunting-grounds, but more frequently for barter, is well known. Captain Parker told me that a native whom he had met one summer at Durbin Island, came on board his ship at Pond's Bay the following year. The distance between the two places, as travelled by this man in a single winter, is scarcely short of 500 miles; and the information given us of Rae's wintering at Repulse Bay, information which must have travelled here in two winters, shows that these natives communicate at still greater distances.

Did other wrecks exist nearer at hand, our Pond's Bay friends would be much better supplied with wood. If the Esquimaux knew of any within 300, 400, or even 500 miles, the Pond's Bay natives would at least have heard of them, and could have had no reason for concealing it from us. I only regret that we had not the good fortune to see more than a few natives, and but two sledges of ship's planking; otherwise our own information might have been more copious, and the origin of the fresh supply of planking decisively ascertained.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] Dr. Rae wintered at Repulse Bay in stone huts in 1846-7. Again wintered there in snow huts in 1853-4.


CHAPTER X.