Captain Mogg, of the whaling schooner Olga, two winters ago pursued his whaling operations far to the north and east.  Ice-bound at Prince Albert Land, he stumbled upon a little settlement of Eskimo.  These were completely isolated from and had had no communication with white men or any community of their own race.  Only one of their number had seen a white man before—­one old, old woman, the grandmother of the band.  The captain of the Olga speaks Eskimo fluently, and to him this ancestress of the “lost tribe” had an interesting story to tell.  She remembered a white man who came across the Great Sea from the west in “a big kayak,” and she extended her arms to show its size.  Her people had given this stranger seal-meat and blubber and the “Chief” from the great ship had presented her with a piece of cloth as red as the new-spilt blood of the seal.  This grandmother-in-Ice-Land is without shadow of doubt the very child to whom M’Clure gave a piece of red flannel far back in the early fifties while prosecuting his double search for the Northwest Passage and the lost Franklin.  We have M’Clure’s record of the incident and the little girl’s questioning wonder,—­“Of what animal is this the skin?” Thus does history manifest itself on the other side of the shield “after many days.”

Through the years, the Eskimo has fared better than the Indian.  It would seem that the London Directorate of the H.B.  Co. expected its servants within the Arctic Circle in the days that are past to do almost a Creator’s part and make all things of nothing.  The scanty provisions and trading goods from England which filtered in thus far were to be given to the Indians in exchange for furs, while the Factor and his people were largely expected to “live on the country.”

Cannibalism was not unknown.  The winter of 1841-2 was an especially hard one.  On the 18th March, 1841, J. William Spence and Murdock Morrison were dispatched with the winter express from Fort Good Hope to Fort Macpherson.  During the second night out, while they were asleep in the encampment, they were knocked on the head by four starving Indian women, immediately cut to pieces, and devoured.  It is further reported that these women previously had killed and eaten their husbands and all their children except one little boy.  Of the two murdered Scots they ate what they could that night and made pemmican of what was over, reporting afterward that one was sweet but that the other, tasting of tobacco, was not so good.

Father Petitot gives us another glimpse of that awful winter.  His naive words are, “Chie-ke-nayelle, a Slavi from Fort Norman, was a winning fellow, handsome, gracious, the possessor of a happy countenance.  On his features played always a smile of contentment and innocence.  In his youth he had eaten of human flesh during the terrible famine of 1841.  He killed his young daughter with a hatchet-blow, cooked her like flesh, and ate her as a meat-pate.  It is said that after one has partaken of human flesh, the appetite for it often returns.  I hasten to add that Chie-ke-nayelle, in spite of the soubriquet mangeur de monde which is irrevocably rivetted to his name, has not succumbed to such an appetite.  He is indeed an excellent Christian.  Nevertheless, I would not like to camp with Chie-ke-nayelle in time of famine.”