isiting, and who each invited me to call at
his tent in its turn. Wherever I entered, the master rose and
resigned his seat next his wife or wives, and stood before me or
squatted on a stone near the door. I was then told to 'speak!' or,
in fact, to give a history of all I knew of the distant tribe,
which, from constant repetition, I could now manage pretty well. In
one tent I found a man mending his paddle, which was ingeniously
made of various little scraps of wood, ivory, and bone, lashed
together. He put it into my hands to repair, taking it for granted
that a Kabloona would succeed much better than himself. An hour
afterward the poor fellow came and took me by the hand to his tent,
where I found a large pot of walrus-flesh evidently cooked for me.
His wife licked a piece and offered it, but, on his saying something
to her, took out another, and, having pared off the outside, gave
me the clean part, which, had it been carrion, I would not have hurt
these poor creatures by refusing. The men showed me some curious
puzzles with knots on their fingers, and I did what I could in
return. The little girls were very expert in a singular but dirty
amusement, which consisted in drawing a piece of sinew up their
nostrils and producing the end out of their mouths. The elder people
were, for the most part, in chase of the tormentors, which swarmed
in their head and clothes; and I saw, for the first time, an
ingenious contrivance for detaching them from the back, or such
parts of the body as the hands could not reach. This was the rib of
a seal, having a bunch of the whitest of a deer's hair attached to
one end of it, and on this rubbing the places which require it, the
little animals stick to it; from their colour they are easily
detected, and, of course, consigned to the mouths of the hunters.

"The weather clearing in the afternoon, one ship was seen in the
distance, which diffused a general joy among the people, who ran
about screaming and dancing with delight. While lounging along the
beach, and waiting the arrival of the ship, I proposed a game at
'leap frog,' which was quite new to the natives, and in learning
which some terrible falls were made. Even the women with the
children at their backs would not be outdone by the men, and they
formed a grotesque party of opposition jumpers. Tire