slightest thanks for a gift, they used to thank the English heartily for eating with them.

The principle of honesty is not indeed always the rule of conduct among them, though in this respect there is much difference among various tribes. Captain Franklin in his second voyage was beset by numbers who attempted to take whatever they could lay their hands upon; though these people were said by their countrymen to be a bad tribe. Captain Parry remarked the general dishonesty of the eastern tribes towards the Europeans but had no evidence that they did not respect the property of each other. Besides, as he remarks, to place a saw, a hatchet, a knife, or a piece of iron, before an Esquimaux, is to offer a temptation as irresistable as gold to an European.

Captain Parry and his associates were as unfavorably impressed with the want of gratitude, as of honesty in the people. They seldom returned thanks for any favor, and the feeling of gratitude seemed to belong to them as little as the expression. A female named Igliuk, who had so great a share of sagacity, that she was called by the sailors 'the wise woman,' and upon whom favors had been showered, was yet so deficient in gratitude that she refused to make a dress of skins for one of the officers. Captain Parry remarked that the attention she had received seemed to have turned her head, and that 'Igliuk in April and Igliuk in February were very different persons; he relates however among a great number of traits of ingratitude, two of a contrary feeling, that are the more impressive as they stood alone. A woman had been taken on board the ship for medical aid, where she was treated with great kindness; a short time before her death, which she knew to be near, she grasped the hand of the surgeon, who had been very kind to her, and pressed it to her lips with all the strength she possessed; the husband was much effected by this last act of his wife, and with many tears earnestly repeated his own thanks.

Though the Esquimaux are remarkable for affection to their children, they have not in the same degree a respect for parents. To be old, is with them, to be without the pale of sympathy, or assistance. Old people and widows are often left, as in Greenland, to perish, though orphans are generally protected by adoption.

Captain Parry remarked that envy was a very general failing with this people; they seemed to repine as much over a gift to their neighbor, as they rejoiced in one to themselves. They had also, more than would be expected in a rude state of society, a taste for scandal, which was much supported by their talent for ridicule. It was very common for a little company when met to mimic some peculiarity of their neighbors, or to set forth in a ludicrous manner some discreditable occurrence.

There are few disputes among them; when these occur, they are sonietimes settled by conventional blows; that is one party in turn abides the blow of the other, and he is the winner that endures the longest.

Wars are unknown among them; though the Indians pursue them with ferocious vindictiveness. Captain Parry related to some of them the massacre of their countrymen described by Hearne; they shuddered, and the mothers pressed their children as if the danger were present. The saine person says of them 'war is not their trade; they are fishermen, and not warriors; but I cannot call that man a coward, who at the age of 21 will attack a polar bear single-handed, or fearlessly commit himself to floating masses of ice, which the next puff of wind may drift from the shore.'

7. AMUSEMENTS. It was rarely that Captain Parry or his companions visited the huts when they did not find the people engaged in some sport or game. Some consist merely in grinning and grimacing, in which they are so successful that the Captain thinks they would put the most skillful

horse collar grinners out of countenance.' They have a game similar to blind-man's buff, but the most common recreation is a recitation of certain words, uttered while the parties are engaged in going through a sort of dance: they have also the skip rope, which is held by two, while a third jumps over it. They are exceedingly fond of music, although their own is not of a very high grade. It is chiefly vocal, though they have a sort of drum or tamborine. Whenever the English played or sung to them the women would bend forward to catch the sounds and remove the hair from their ears. Their own songs are long; and the most common have the chorus common in Greenland, Amna Aya. Captain Parry did them a favor much to their taste, when he instructed them in leap frog and other games; they became expert at the former, and when he walked forth, put themselves in line and position to be jumped over.

8. GOVERNMENT. There is no government in force among the Esquimaux, but that of families; yet in all their settlements, they act with wonderful unanimity. There is not even a word in their language to express a superior, in point of station.

9. RELIGION, &c. They have no conception of a Supreme Being, and their notions are very confused concerning a future state. They have hardly any belief that may be called religious. Their superstitions relate principally to spirits, with whom their Angetkooks or conjurers are supposed to have communication.

The marriages are performed with no solemnity or ceremony, and the courtships are more summary than in civilized countries. The Esquimaux, upon some intimation from his future father-in-law, or other friend of the bride, goes for her and carries her off, as by force, to his own hut. Resistance is, as in Greenland, a part of the ceremony that custom imposes on the female. Generally, there is little polygamy, and all are married young. The Esquimaux did not credit the assertion of the English sailors, that the most of them were unmarried. They use their wives kindly, and one has only to enter their hut to see that the domestic affections can flourish at this extremity of the earth. In this respect, they are far superior to any tribe of Indians, in which the women are slaves to the cruelty and caprice of the stronger sex. Even Igliuk (mentioned by Parry) in whom the feeling of gratitude seemed to have no existence, showed the deepest feeling when her husband was ill. 'Nothing could exceed the attention she paid him; she kept her eyes almost constantly upon him, and seemed anxious to anticipate every wish.'

The burials have as little ceremony as the marriages; the bodies are buried beneath stones or ice, yet so carelessly that the wolves often prey upon them, and skulls are to be seen about some of the huts. The canoe, and some implements are placed near the grave, and a friend sometimes walks several times around it. At deaths, and on other occasions of misfortune, the friends sometimes assemble to cry and howl with the afflicted; this is a ceremony of condolence, begun generally by the person who sustained the loss; the others, when he has begun to express sorrow, join him with groans and expressions of grief.

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CHAPTER XXXVIII. POLAR REGIONS.

1. GREENLAND. There are no means of ascertaining whether Greenland is joined with America, or is an island, or a part of a polar continent. It is an extensive country in the most northern region of the globe, bounded on the E. and S. by the north Atlantic ocean. The shore on the western side has been explored about a thousand miles. It is high, rugged and barren, rising from the water's edge into precipices and mountains which are crowned with perpetual snow. The eastern coast, beyond the promontory of Herjolf's Ness, is absolutely unexplored. An everlasting barrier of ice precludes the attempt.

This country belongs to the crown of Denmark. The Danish establishments consist of about twenty factories, scattered along the coast, and divided into two departments, over each of which an inspector presides. Besides those for the fishing trade, there are several settlements of the Moravian missionaries. Cape Farewell, the southern extremity of Greenland, is situated in 59° N. lat. Coasting to the N. W. from this place the first settlement in Julianshaab, and then Frederickshaab upon a projecting point of land. The latter was founded in 1742, has a good harbor and is an eligible place of trade.

Nine leagues from this colony is the well known Ice Blink. This is a vast elevated sheet of ice, reflecting a brightness over the sky which resembles the Northern Lights. The mouth of the adjoining bay is blocked by ice driven out by the efflux of the tide, and so wonderfully heaped by the waves that the spaces between the islands are completely vaulted over, and present the sublime spectacle of an enormous bridge of ice, eighteen miles long and nearly five broad. Boats may enter the harbor under the arches which are from sixty to an hundred and eighty feet high. The mouth of the bay is closed, but there is a sheet of open water within.

In latitude 64° 14' stands Gothaab, a settlement, where there is a church, founded in 1721 by the famous missionary Egede. Some thousands of the natives formerly dwelt in this vicinity; but in 1733 the ravages of the small pox thinned their numbers, and their population has been on the decline ever since.

Passing the colonies of Sukkertoppen and Holsteinburg, we come to Disko Island. From the great distance at which it first becomes visible above the horizon, this island must be more than a mile in perpendicular height. Disko Bay is an hundred and twenty leagues in circuit, and has the most productive fishery of any in Greenland. There are several settlements on and about the island. Lively is the principal, and has an excellent harbor for small vessels.

The climate of Greenland is intensely cold; and in winter, while the N. E. wind blows, the thermometer is often at 48° below zero. Before the ice begins to be formed the sea smokes, and produces a fog called frost smoke, which has the singular effect of blistering the skin. The aurora borealis sometimes appears here in great splendor. Mock suns are very frequent. From the peculiar state of the atmosphere in clear weather, the islands of the continent seem to the spectator to approach nearer him, and to increase in size; sometimes they assume the form of groups different from the real shape, and appear suspended in air. Lightning is sometimes observed, but thunder is rare. The rains are generally of short duration, the air is pure, and in some places the heat in summer exceeds 80°.

It may well be supposed that the vegetable productions of such a soil and climate are not very numerous or luxuriant. The valleys are clothed with mosses and a miserable species of grass. A few herbs, bilberry bushes, and

other shrubs vegetate on the desert isles, and on cliffs which have just soil enough for them to take root. The most common of these is the scurvy grass, of which a soup is prepared that in many diseases is an excellent medicine. There are other plants of a dwarfish character, and trees which never rise above eighteen feet. Some attempts have been made to cultivate oats and barley, but they never came to perfection.

The trade to Greenland has always been a monopoly, and it is now carried on by the Danish government. Each settlement is managed by a trader, and his assistant, in their employment. The exports are feathers and eiderdown, horns of the sea-unicorn, skins of seals, foxes, bears, hares and reindeers, whalebone, and oil of all kinds. Five or six vessels go out from Copenhagen to Greenland every year, about the beginning of May. Their cargoes are made up of guns and ammunition, all sorts of ironmongery, various cloths, looking-glasses, snuff-boxes, &c. The whale fisheries, are chiefly carried on by the settlers, and for the Danish government. The British whale-fishers visit Disko yearly about the end of April and leave it in June.

In 1802, including the Moravian settlements and the natives, the total population of the west coast of Greenland was supposed to amount to twenty thousand souls.

Greenland was first discovered to Europeans in the 8th or 9th century, by Ericke Raude, an Icelander, who was driven by accident upon the coast. On his return he represented the country so favorably to his countrymen, that several families followed him thither, where they soon became a thriving colony, and bestowed upon their new habitation the name of Groenland, that is 'green land,' on account of its verdant appearance. The Greenlanders became tributary to Denmark in A. D. 1023, which was soon after they embraced Christianity. A bishopric was erected there, and there is a long list of their bishops on record. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth, Martin Frobisher discovered Greenland, and penetrated the strait known by his name. Davis, Button, Hudson, Baffin and Parry, in seeking for a N. W. passage, have added much to the knowledge of arctic geography.

2. ISLANDS. Greenland is surrounded by many thousands of islands, which are mostly barren rocks, interspersed with valleys covered with perpetual ice. They are visited by the Greenlanders, during spring, for the purpose of catching seals. In 61° 21', an uninhabited island of considerable magnitude, called from its terrific appearance, the Cape of Desolation, is always surrounded by masses of floating ice. Spitzbergen was long considered as forming a part of Old Greenland, but is now ascertained to be a cluster of islands, scattered between 760 and 80° N. lat., and 90 and 24° E. lon. The principal of these is 300 miles in length, and presents to the eye numberless peaks, precipices and ridges rising from 3,000 to 4,500 feet above the sea level. This country is claimed by the Russians, who maintain a colony from Archangel. West of Greenland are the North Georgian Islands and Melville Island, where the English discovery ships wintered.

3. INHABITANTS. Early in the 10th century an Icelandic colony was planted in Greenland, of which the records show a flourishing state down to the year 1408. At that time the small trade between Norway and Greenland was for a long period discontinued, and the colony has not since then been discovered, if it can be supposed to exist. The colony had many stations and churches. The Skrællings, or dwarfs, as the Norwegians called the Greenland race of Esquimaux, made their first appearance in the colony about the year 1350, and are the present inhabitants of Greenland. The colonists are supposed to have been destroyed by them, to have perished by famine, or the pestilence called the black death, that raged in Europe in the middle of the 14th century. There are however some traces of the present existence

of a race of people in the north, in manner of life different from that of the southern natives. In 1822 Captain Scoresby found a dead body recently enclosed in a coffin, and it is related that in 1530 an Icelandic Bishop who was driven near the coast, saw upon the shores people with herds of cattle. The accumulation of ice has been a barrier to modern discoveries.

The

The inhabitants of Greenland are of the same stock with the race of Esquimaux, that extend over the whole northern coast of America; and who resemble more the natives of the North of Europe than the tribes of American Indians. Between the Greenlanders and Esquimaux there is similarity of figure, dress, houses, boats, weapons, manners, and languages. children are little more dark than a brunette. In height the Greenlanders seldom exceed 5 feet; they have flat faces with high cheek bones, and very full cheeks. From their manner of life they are much inclined to fat. Their eyes are small and black, but with little lustre; and their hair is long and black. They have little beard, which they carefully eradicate. A life of alternate plenty and want in a severe climate is so little favorable to longevity, that few males live to above 50 years of age; females, who endure less hardships, sometimes attain to 80 years.

4. DRESS. In a climate like that of Greenland the main end of dress is defence from cold, and when this is attained it is not usual here to be solicitous for neatness or display. Perhaps the reverse of neatness is never carried so far as in a Greenlander's person and dress, as the skins in which he is clothed literally drip with fat. Hans Egede says of them, that 'delicate noses do not find their account among them;' and he farther affirms, that the olfactory sensation, strikes one not accustomed to it, to the very heart.' It is not here that one would feel the wish of Catullus, to be all nose.

The materials for dress are generally skins, though a few natives wear some articles of European woolen. The outward garment is a loose frock with a hood like the cowl of a monk; this and the breeches are of seal or rein-deer skins. The shirt is sometimes made of the skins of fowls with the feathers inward. Some people however wear coarse European linen. The dress of females is little different from that of the males; though mothers have a frock so capacious, that they can carry a child at the back stowed between the body and the coat.

5. DWELLINGS. The houses are not, as has been sometimes stated, subterranean, but they are always placed on a little eminence that the water may be conducted away. They are near to the sea, the element to which the Greenlander looks for all his resources. They are so low that the inhabitants can barely stand in them upright. They are generally built by the women, of large blocks of stone, in which the interstices are filled with mud and turf. They are formed in a line like barracks and one of them contains from two to ten families, of whom however each has a separate apartment opening from a common entry that runs in front of all the rooms. There are no chimnies, as the only fire used is that of lamps, and this is so considerable that the apartments are warm. The entrance is under an arched or covered way of 20 feet, so low that to enter it, it is necessary almost to creep. In summer these huts are deserted for tents made of seal skins stretched upon a post of whale-bone, or wood, and made fast to the ground by large

stones.

6. FOOD. Fish, which form the wealth of all the northern shores, are in great abundance about Greenland. The ordinary food of the inhabitants is the Greenland salmon, a small and delicate fish, seldom more than a foot in length, but so abundant that in the bays it darkens the waters. The