Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West PassageParry, William Edward, Sir
History
Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage
Parry, William Edward, Sir
Arctic regions -- Discovery and exploration -- British; Fury (Ship); Hecla (Ship); Northwest Passage
The distance to which these people extend their inland migrations, and
the extent of coast of which they possess a personal knowledge, are
really very considerable. Of these we could at the time of our first
intercourse form no correct judgment, from our uncertainty as to the
length of what they call a _seenik_ (sleep), or one day’s journey, by
which alone they could describe to us, with the help of their imperfect
arithmetic, the distance from one place to another. But our subsequent
knowledge of the coast has cleared up much of this difficulty, affording
the means of applying to their hydrographical sketches a tolerably
accurate scale for those parts which we have not hitherto visited. A
great number of these people, who were born at Amitioke and Igloolik, had
been to _Noowook_, or nearly as far south as Chesterfield Inlet, which is
about the _ne plus ultra_ of their united knowledge in a southerly
direction. Not one of them had been by water round to Akkoolee, but
several by land; in which mode of travelling they only consider that
country from three to five days’ journey from Repulse Bay. Okotook and a
few others of the Winter Island tribe had extended their peregrinations a
considerable distance to the northward, over the large insular piece of
land to which we have applied the name of Cockburn Island; which they
described as high land and the resort of numerous reindeer. Here Okotook
informed us he had seen icebergs, which these people call by a name
(_pīccălōōyăk_) having in its pronunciation some affinity to that used in
Greenland. By the information afterwards obtained when nearer the spot,
we had reason to suppose this land must reach beyond the seventy-second
degree of latitude in a northerly direction; so that these people possess
a personal knowledge of the continent of America and its adjacent
islands, from that parallel to Chesterfield Inlet in 63¾°, being a
distance of more than five hundred miles reckoned in a direct line,
besides the numerous turnings and windings of the coast along which they
are accustomed to travel. Ewerat and some others had been a considerable
distance up the Wager River; but no record had been preserved among them
of Captain Middleton’s visit to that inlet about the middle of the last
century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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