﻿ANECDOTES. 389 



in some ^particulars to the meeting of Joab and 

 Abner recorded in the second book of Samuel. 

 A party of each of the two nations having met, the 

 young men rose up to dance, as if the meeting had 

 been entirely amicable ; but the Eskimos having, as 

 they are accustomed to do, concealed their long 

 flenching knives in the sleeves of their deer-skin 

 shirts, drew them in one of the evolutions of the 

 dance, and thrust them into their opponents. A 

 general conflict ensued, in which the Kutchin were 

 the victors, owing to their guns — that is, according 

 to their report of the afl'air; but had the Eskimos 

 been the tellers of the story, the circumstances 

 might have been related differently. 



Another incident, which occurred on the banks 

 of the Yukon in 1845, gives us a further insight 

 into the suspicious and timorous lives of these 

 people. One night four strangers, from the lower 

 part of the river, arrived at the tent of an old man 

 Avho was sick, and who had with him only two 

 sons, one of them a mere boy. The new-comers 

 entered in a friendly manner, and, when the hour 

 of repose came, lay down ; but the sons perceiving 

 that their guests did not sleep, and suspecting from 

 their conduct that they meditated evil, feigned a 

 desire of visiting their moose-deer snares. They 

 intimated their purpose aloud to their father, and 

 went out, taking with them their bows and arrows, 



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