ii4 ARCTIC HIGHLANDERS. Chap. VIII. 



detailed account of their relationships and accomplishments. 

 There were three tents only ; words can scarcely describe 

 the filth and wretchedness of such abodes ; the sealskins 

 composing the tents, and the skins of various sorts which 

 served for beds, and blankets, were scarcely half dressed, and 

 emitted an intolerable effluvium, whilst the ground in every 

 direction was strewed with bones and decaying animal 

 matter. The dresses of the women were covered with 

 blubber and soot, their faces and necks black and greasy, 

 and eyes bleared, from constantly superintending the slow 

 process of cooking in a stone vessel over a smoky blubber 

 lamp. Several fresh sealskins were stretched upon the 

 earth, and pegged down with small bones, whilst the carcases, 

 not required for present use, were covered over with large 

 stones to preserve them from the dogs. Not twenty yards 

 from the tents stood the ruin of a winter hut ; I looked in 

 through a crevice and saw that the ordinary flooring of flat 

 stones was nearly covered with ice, and, from the quantity of 

 scraps and bones lying about, it seemed to have become the 

 occasional habitation of the dogs ; — but there was also a 

 human skeleton, and near to it that of a dog. In times of 

 distress, when unable to bury the dead, the hut is usually aban- 

 doned, as appears to have been the case in this instance. 



It would be difficult to find a more repulsive and humilia- 

 ting spectacle than I have here briefly described. 



The dogs were very fine, large, wolfish in appearance, and 

 with much of the carriage and the quick, intelligent, restless 

 eyes peculiar to beasts of prey. 



These degraded people are effectually cut off from civili- 

 zation, and from the more southern inhabitants of Greenland 

 by the enormous and impassable glaciers of Melville Bay ; 

 the distance from Cape York to Upernivik, the nearest 

 inhabited land to the southward, is about 250 miles. At 

 Godhavn I received a request from the Royal Danish Green- 



