their dark,
dull eyes,--making room for us on the bedside. Presently others come in,
mildly curious to see the strangers,--all with the same aspect of
unthinking, good-tempered, insensitive, animal content. The head is low
and smooth; the cheekbones high, but less so than those of American
Indians; the jowl so broad and heavy as sometimes to give the _ensemble_
of head and face the outline of a cone truncated and rounded off above.
In the females, however, the cheek is so extremely plump as perfectly to
pad these broad jaws, giving, instead of the prize-fighter physiognomy,
an aspect of smooth, gentle heaviness. Even without this fleshy cheek,
which is not noticeable, and is sometimes noticeably wanting, in the
men, there is the same look of heavy, well-tempered lameness. The girls
have a rich blood color in their swarthy cheeks, and some of them are
really pretty, though always in a lumpish, domestic-animal style. The
hands and feet are singularly small; the fingers short, but nicely
tapered. Take hold of the hand, and you are struck with its _cetacean_
feel. It is not flabby, but has a peculiar blubber-like, elastic
compressibility, and seems not quite of human warmth.

See them in their houses, and you see the horizon of their life. In
these fat faces, with their thoughtless content, in this pent-up,
greasy, wooden den, the whole is told. The air is close and fetid with
animal exhalations. The entrails and part of the flesh of a seal, which
lie on the floor in a corner,--to furnish a dinner,--do not make the
atmosphere nor the aspect more agreeable. Yet you see that to them this
is comfort, this is completeness of existence. If they are hungry, they
seek food. Food obtained, they return to eat and be comfortable until
they are again hungry. Their life has, on this earth at least, no
farther outlook. It sallies, it returns, but here is the fruition; for
is not the seal-flesh dinner there, nicely and neatly bestowed on the
floor? Are they not warm? (The den is swelteringly hot.) Are they not
fed? What would one have more?

Yes, somewhat more, namely, tobacco,--and also second-hand clothes, with
which to be fine in church. For these they will barter seal-skins,
dog-skins, seal-skin boots, a casual bear-skin, bird-spears,
walrus-spears, anything they have to vend,--concealing their traffic a
little from the missionaries. Colored glass beads were also in request
among the women. Ph---- had brought some large, well-made