skimo have lost much of the art of using their
kayaks, the canoes into which they used to bind themselves securely,
so that when they turned over in the water it did no harm. They would
'bob up serenely' and go right on, and in contests one man would pass
his boat right over that of a rival without risk of accident.

"The Eskimo and the Indians were bitter enemies. The story of the last
fight is, that the Eskimo had their fishing-huts on an island off the
mouth of a river.

"Down-stream by night crept the Indians in their war-canoes. These
they dragged ashore and hid in the rocks. Next morning the Eskimo came
upon their enemies and at once attacked them.

"The Eskimo are little people as compared with the Indians. The
Indians, their squaws fighting like bears beside them, drove the
Eskimo back and back toward the sea.

"Stubbornly the 'huskies' contested every inch of the ground. Now and
again they would crawl into holes among the rocks--but the Indians
would find them there and cut them down without mercy, like animals
trapped in their burrows.

"The Eskimo had their choice between the Indians and the sea. They
would carry their children and even their wives down to the boats on
their backs, and sometimes the frail skin-boats would turn over, and
all the people in them would be drowned. If they succeeded in putting
out to sea, they had no place to go: the Indians waiting ashore would
get them whenever and wherever they landed.

"At last--there were only the Indians in their war-paint, dancing and
howling on the beach--not an Eskimo was left to tell the tale."

A few days later, Dr. Grenfell came to Hopedale.

There, he found, the Eskimo believed that Queen Victoria, away off
there on the other side of the ocean, was sitting on a rock waiting
for the _Harmony_ (the Moravian mission ship from Labrador) to come in
sight.

They loaded him down with all sorts of messages they wanted him to
give her.

Especially, they wanted him to say to her that they were very, very
grateful to her for sending him over the seas to help them.

When they learned that England was at war in Egypt, and a brave
general was holding the upper Nile against a crowd of savages,
although they hadn't the slightest notion as to where Egypt was or who
the Egyptians were, they got out everything they had in the way of
firearms and began to drill up and down on the rocky beach.

One old fellow had a policeman's coat split up the back and muc