He said the appearance of the bones led the Inuits to the opinion that
the white men bad been eating each other. What little flesh was still
on the bones was very fresh; one body had all the flesh on. The hair
was light; it looked like a long body. He saw a number of wire
snow-goggles, and alongside the body with flesh on it was a pair of
gold spectacles. (He picked out the kind of metal from several that
were shown him.) He saw more than one or two pairs of such spectacles,
but forgot how many. When asked how long the bodies appeared to have
been dead when he saw them, he said they had probably died during the
winter previous to the summer he saw them. In the boat he saw canvas
and four sticks (a tent or sail), saw a number of watches, open-faced;
a few were gold, but most were silver. They are all lost now. They were
given to the children to play with, and have been broken up and lost.
One body--the one with flesh on--had a gold chain fastened to gold
ear-rings, and a gold hunting-case watch with engine-turned engraving
attached to the chain, and hanging down about the waist. He said when
he pulled the chain it pulled the head up by the ears. This body also
had a gold ring on the ring finger of the right hand. It was taken off,
and has since been lost by the children in the same way that the other
things were lost. His reason for thinking that they had been eating
each other was because the bones were cut with a knife or saw. They
found one big saw and one small one in the boat; also a large red tin
case of smoking tobacco and some pipes. There was no cairn there. The
bones are now covered up with sand and sea-weed, as they were lying
just at high-water mark. Some of the books were taken home for the
children to play with, and finally torn and lost, and others lay around
among the rocks until carried away by the wind and lost or buried
beneath the sand.
His statement in reference to one of the deceased wearing a watch by a
chain attached to his ears appears strange, but I give the statement as
he made it. The chain may in some way have become attached to the ears,
or, ridiculous as the story sounds, there may have been some eccentric
person in the party who wore his watch in that way, and if such should
prove to be the case, this would certainly identify him beyond doubt.
While the old woman sat in our igloo giving her statement, or trying to
recollect the circumstances, I succeeded in getting a good portrait
sketch of her, which attracted considerable interest among the natives,
and Ogzeuckjeuwock, who toward the latter part of the interview had
begun to exhibit symptoms of impatience, turned quickly around as soon
as he had finished, and asked to have his portrait taken also, in which
I accommodated him, much to his gratification.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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