Besides the ivory knives, the men were well supplied with a much more serviceable kind, made of iron, and called panna.  The form of this knife is very peculiar, being seven inches long, two and a quarter broad, quite straight and flat, pointed at the end, and ground equally sharp at both edges; this is firmly secured into a handle of bone or wood about a foot long, by two or three iron rivets, and has all the appearance of a most destructive spearhead, but is nevertheless put to no other purpose than that of a very useful knife, which the men are scarcely ever without, especially on their sealing excursions.  For these, and several knives of European form, they are probably indebted to an indirect communication with our factories in Hudson’s Bay.  The same may be observed of the best of their women’s knives (ooloo), on one of which, of a larger size than usual, were the names of “Wild and Sorby.”  When of their own manufacture, the only iron part was a little narrow slip let into the bone and secured by rivets.

Of the horn of the musk-ox they make also very good spoons, much like ours in shape; and I must not omit to mention their marrow spoons (patt=ekniuk, from p=att~ek, marrow), made out of long, narrow, hollowed pieces of bone, of which every housewife has a bunch of half a dozen or more tied together, and generally attached to her needle-case.

For the purpose of obtaining fire, the Esquimaux use two lumps of common iron pyrites, from which sparks are struck into a little leathern case containing moss well dried and rubbed between the hands.  If this tinder does not readily catch, a small quantity of the white floss of the seed of the ground-willow is laid above the moss.  As soon as a spark has caught, it is gently blown till the fire has spread an inch around, when, the pointed end of a piece of oiled wick being applied, it soon bursts into a flame—­the whole process having occupied perhaps two or three minutes.

In enumerating the articles of their food, we might, perhaps, give a list of every animal inhabiting these regions, as they certainly will, at times, eat any one of them.  Their principal dependance, however, is on the reindeer (t=o=okto~o); musk-ox (_=o=om~ingm~uk_), in the parts where this animal is found; whale (_=agg~aw~ek_); walrus (_=ei-u-ek_); the large and small seal (_=og~uke_ and n~eitiek); and two sorts of salmon, the _=ew~ee-t=ar~oke_ (salmo alpinus?) and ichl=u~ow~oke.  The latter is taken by hooks in fresh-water lakes, and the former by spearing in the shoal water of certain inlets of the sea.  Of all these animals, they can only procure in the winter the walrus and small seal upon this part of the coast; and these at times, as we have seen, in scarcely sufficient quantity for their subsistence.