Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and Narrative of an Attempt to Reach the North Pole, Volume 1Parry, William Edward, Sir
History
Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and Narrative of an Attempt to Reach the North Pole, Volume 1
Parry, William Edward, Sir
Arctic regions; Northwest Passage; Parry, William Edward, Sir, 1790-1855
On the 7th I paid another visit to the huts, where I found
scarcely anybody but women and children, the whole of the men,
with the exception of the two oldest, having gone on a sealing
excursion to the northeastern side of the island. One of the
women, named _Il=igliuk_, a sister of the lad Toolooak, who
favoured us with a song, struck us as having a remarkably soft
voice, an excellent ear, and a great fondness for singing, for
there was scarcely any stopping her when she had once begun. We
had, on their first visit to the ships, remarked this trait in
Iligliuk's disposition, when she was listening for the first time
to the sound of the organ, of which she seemed never to have
enough; and almost every day she now began to display some of that
superiority of understanding for which she was so remarkably
distinguished. A few of the women learned several of our names
to-day, and I believe all thought us Angekoks[*] of a very
superior class, when we repeated to them all round, by the
assistance of our books, the names of all their husbands, obtained
on board the preceding day. On our way back to the ships we saw a
party of them, with their dogs, returning over the hill from the
northeastward; and we afterward met another of eight or ten, who
had walked round by the southeast point on the ice, all alike
unsuccessful, after being out in the wind for six hours, with the
thermometer from 18 to 22 degrees below _zero_. Thus hardly did
these people obtain their daily subsistence at this severe season
of the year.
[Footnote: Sorcerers or wizards, pronounced as written above in
Greenland; but at Winter Island _Ang-~et-k~ook_; and by the people
at Igloolik, _An-n~at-k~o_.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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