﻿OCCUPATIONS. 345 



tenances expressive of cheerfulness, good nature, 

 and confidence ; and the females, being by no 

 means inclined to repress their mirth, are wont to 

 display a set of white teeth that an European belle 

 might covet. The elderly people have features 

 more furrowed than those we see in civilised life, 

 as we might expect when the passions are not 

 habitually repressed ; and in some of the old men 

 the lines of tlie countenance denote distrust and 

 hatred. These ill-favoured individuals were, hap- 

 pily, not numerous, and several of the patriarchs we 

 communicated with had a truly benevolent aspect. 

 The weather-beaten faces of some of the old women, 

 gleaming with covetousness, excited by seeing in 

 our possession wealth beyond the previous creations 

 of their imagination, lead one to believe that the 

 poet who sang "Old age is dark and unlovely" had 

 drawn his picture from a people equally hard and 

 unsoftened by the cultivation of intellect ; and I 

 feel no surprise that Frobisher's people should have 

 suspected the unfortunate elderly woman who fell 

 into their hands of being a witch, while they let 

 the young one go free. 



Year after year sees these people occupied in a 

 uniform circle of pursuits. When the rivers open 

 in spring they resort to rapids and falls, to spear 

 the various kinds of fish that ascend the streams at 

 that period to spawn. At the same date, or a little 



