d a matter of some interest to
ascertain whether they were acquainted with the musk-ox, a drawing
of that animal was put before the men who were on board. The small
size of it seemed, at first sight, to confound them; but, as soon
as the real head and horns were produced, they immediately
recognised them, and eagerly repeated the word _oomingmack_, which
at once satisfied us that they knew the musk-ox, and that this was
the animal spoken of by the Esquimaux of Greenland, under the same
name, somewhat differently pronounced.

To judge by their appearance, and what is, perhaps, a better
criterion, the number of their children, there could be little
doubt that the means of subsistence which they possess are very
abundant; but of this we had more direct proof by the quantity of
seahorses and seals which we found concealed under stones along
the shore of the north branch, as well as on Observation Island.
Mr. Fife reported that, in sounding the north branch, he met with
their winter huts above two miles above the tents on the same
shore, and that they were partly excavated from a bank facing the
sea, and the rest built round with stones.

We saw no appearance of disease among the seventeen persons who
inhabited the tents, except that the eyes of the old couple were
rather blear, and a very young infant looked pale and sickly. The
old man had a large scar on one side of his head, which he
explained to us very clearly to be a wound he had received from a
_nennook_ (bear). Upon the whole, these people may be considered
in possession of every necessary of life, as well as of most of
the comforts and conveniences which can be enjoyed in so rude a
state of society. In the situation and circumstances in which the
Esquimaux of North Greenland are placed, there is much to excite
compassion for the low state to which human nature appears to be
there reduced; a state in few respects superior to that of the
bear or the seal which they kill for their subsistence. But, with
these, it was impossible not to experience a feeling of a more
pleasing kind: there was a respectful decency in their general
behaviour, which at once struck us as very different from that of
the other untutored Esquimaux, and in their persons there was less
of that intolerable filth by which these people are so generally
distinguished. But the superiority for which they are the most
remarkable is, the perfect honesty which characterized all their
dealings with us.