These were our diversions. Our business was to inquire into the truth of Captain Barry's story. Pursuing our investigation through the next three months, we learned that there had never been other than three families of Natchillis living with the Iwillik Esquimaux. One of those, the native who had died in the preceding winter, was an aged paralytic called "Monkey," whose tongue was so affected that even his own people could scarcely understand him. The second was Natchilli Joe, known to his own people as Ekeeseek, who was a child in his mother's hood at the time when he lived on King William Land, and only knew the story of the Franklin expedition from hearsay. The third, Nu-tar-ge-ark, a man of about forty-five or fifty years of age, gave us valuable information. His father, many years ago, opened a cairn on the northern shore of Washington Bay, in King William Land, and took from it a tin box containing a piece of paper with some writing on it. Not far from this same spot were the ruins of a cairn which had been built by white men and torn down by Inuits. The cairn had been built upon a large flat stone, which had the appearance of having been dragged to its present location from a stony point near by. The cairn itself was found to be empty, but it was generally believed by the Inuits that there was something buried beneath this stone. It was very heavy, and as they had only been there in parties of two or three at a time, they had never been able to overturn the stone, though they had repeatedly tried. Nutargeark also said he had brought a spoon with him from King William Land, which corresponded in description with the one Barry took to the United States. He said it was given to him by some of his tribe, and that it had come from one of the boat places, or where skeletons had been found on King William Land or Adelaide Peninsula, he could not remember exactly where. He had not given the spoon to Captain Barry, but to the wife of Sinuksook, an Iwillik Esquimau, who afterward gave it to a Captain Potter. We saw Sinuksook's wife a little later, and she distinctly remembered having given the spoon to Captain Potter. It was necessary, therefore, to find this officer. [Illustration: CAIRN MARKING DEPOSIT OF PROVISIONS.]