at no great distance from Pond’s Bay, in lat. 72-1/2 deg., which has lately become a common rendezvous of our Davis’s Strait fishermen.  Of this fact we had, in the course of the winter, received intimation from these people from time to time, and had even some reason to believe that our visit to the Esquimaux of the River Clyde in 1820 was known to them; but what most excited our interest at this time was the sledge brought by the new comers, the runner being composed of large single pieces of wood, one of them painted black over a lead-coloured priming, and the cross-bars consisting of heading-pieces of oak-buts, one flat board with a hinge-mark upon it the upper end of a skid or small boat’s davit, and others that had evidently and recently been procured from some ship.  On one of the heading-pieces we distinguished the letters Brea—­, showing that the cask had, according to the custom of the whalers, contained bread on the outward passage.  The nature of all these materials led us to suppose that it must have been procured from some vessel wrecked or damaged on the coast; and this suspicion was on the following day confirmed by our obtaining information that, at a place called Akk=o=odneak, a single day’s journey beyond Toonoonek, two ships like ours had been driven on shore by the ice, and that the people had gone away in boats equipped for the purpose, leaving one ship on her beam ends, and the other upright, in which situation the vessels were supposed still to remain.[004]

We observed on this occasion as on our first arrival at Igloolik, that the new Esquimaux were obliged to have recourse to the others to interpret to them our meaning, which circumstance, as it still appeared to me, was to be attributed, as before, to our speaking a kind of broken Esquimaux that habit had rendered familiar to our old acquaintance, rather than to any essential difference in the true languages of the two people.

Toolemak having some time before promised to accompany me to the fishing-place, taking with him his wife, together with his sledge, dogs, and tent, made his appearance from Ooglit on the 23d, bringing, however, only the old lady and abundance of meat.  Having lent him a tent and two of our dogs, and hired others to complete his establishment, we set out together at five A.M. on the 24th, my own party consisting of Mr. Crozier and a seaman from each ship.  Arriving at Khemig towards noon, we found among the islands that the ice was quite covered with water, owing, probably, to the radiation of heat from the rocks.  The weather proved, indeed, intensely hot this day, the thermometer in the shade, at the ships, being as high as 51 deg., and the land in this neighbourhood preventing the access of wind from any quarter.  The travelling being good beyond this, we arrived within four or five miles of the head of Quilliam Creek at ten P.M., where we pitched the tents for the night.  In this day’s journey ten dogs had drawn my sledge a distance of forty statute miles