es and
boots, nor needles for sewing their clothes. Their ingenuity was,
therefore, again put to the test, and was not slow in making up the
deficiency. They contrived to make both very well, out of the bits of
iron which they had collected from time to time. One of their most
difficult tasks, was to make eyes to their needles; but this they
accomplished with the help of their knife; for having ground it to a
very sharp point, and heated a kind of wire, forged for the purpose,
red-hot, they pierced a hole through one end, and by whetting and
smoothing it on stones, brought the other to a point. These needles
were astonishingly well formed, nothing being amiss with them but the
roughness of the eye, by which the thread was sometimes cut. It was
indeed surprising that they were so well made, considering the rude
instruments with which they were fashioned. Having no scissors, they
were obliged to cut out their clothes with the knife; and though this
was their first attempt at the trade of shoemaker or tailor, yet they
contrived to cut out the articles which they required with as much
precision as if they had served a regular apprenticeship to the
business. The sinews of the reindeer and bears answered for thread.
They set earnestly to their work. For summer wear, they made a sort of
jacket and trousers of the prepared skins; for winter, long fur-gowns,
with hoods, made after the fashion of those worn by the Laplanders.

The constant employment which their necessities required, and the
various difficulties which they had to overcome by ingenious
contrivance, so far from having been a misfortune, may be considered
as having been the means of preserving these poor men from sinking
under their unhappy circumstances. But accordingly as their ingenuity
had supplied their wants, and their minds became more disengaged from
expedients, their melancholy increased, and they looked round
despondingly on the sterile and desolate region where, they felt, they
were to spend the rest of their days, far away from the hearths of
home, and from early friends and companions. Even the probability of
that little circle being lessened, and, it might be, reduced to one
solitary being, was a dreadful thought: each felt that this might be
his own fate. Then the fear of all means of sustenance failing, and
the assaults of wild beasts, were dangers too glaring to be forgotten.
Alexis Himkof, who had left a wife and three children, suffered
perhaps t