y
just what they choose to give 'em. They fleece the Esquimaux; they take
off of 'em all but the skin. They are just traders!"

My spleen did not last. There was some cause of coldness,--I know not
what. The missionaries afterwards became cordial, visited the schooner,
and exchanged presents with us. I believe them good men. If their
relation to the natives assume in some degree a pecuniary aspect, it is
due to the necessity of supporting the mission by the profits of
traffic. If they preserve a stately distance toward the Esquimaux, it is
to retain influence over them. If they allow the native mind to confound
somewhat the worship of God with the worship of its teachers, it is that
the native mind cannot get beyond personal relations, and must worship
something tangible. That they are not at all entangled in the routine
and material necessities of their position I do not assert; that they do
not carry in it something of noble and self-forgetful duty nothing I
have seen will persuade me.

_August 1._--We go to push our explorations among the Esquimaux, and
invite the reader to make one of the party. Enter a hut. The door is
five feet high,--that is, the height of the wall. Stoop a little,--ah,
there goes a hat to the ground, and a hand to a hurt pate! One must move
carefully in these regions, which one hardly knows whether to call sub-
or supra-terranean.

This door opens into a sort of porch occupying one end of the den; the
floor, earth. Three or four large, dirty dogs lie dozing here, and start
up with an aspect of indescribable, half-crouching, mean malignity, as
we enter; but a sharp word, with perhaps some menace of stick or cane,
sends the cowardly brutes sneaking away. In a corner is a circle of
stones, on which cooking is done; and another day we may find the family
here picking their food out of a pot, and serving themselves to it, with
the fingers. Save this primitive fireplace, and perhaps a kettle for the
dogs to lick clean, this porch is bare.

From this we crouch into the living-room through a door two and a half
or three feet high, and find ourselves in an apartment twelve feet
square, and lighted by a small, square skin window in the roof. The only
noticeable furniture consists of two board beds, with skins for
bed-clothes. The women sit on these beds, sewing upon seal-skin boots.
They receive us with their characteristic fat and phlegmatic
good-nature, a pleasant smile on their chubby cheeks and in