360 VOYAGE TO THE 



spears, which they had probably obtained from the 

 Tschutschi. They had more curiosity than our 



August, /> • 'a j -l • i l 



1826. former visiters, and examined very minutely every 

 part of our dress ; from which circumstance, and 

 their being frightened at the discharge of a gun, and 

 no less astonished when a bird fell close to them, 

 we judged they had had a very limited intercourse 

 with Europeans. The oldest person we saw among 

 the party was a cripple about fifty years of age. 

 The others were robust people above the average 

 height of Esquimaux : the tallest man was five feet 

 nine inches, and the tallest woman five feet four 

 inches. All the women were tattooed upon the chin 

 with three small lines, which is a general distin- 

 guishing mark of the fair sex along this coast ; this 

 is effected by drawing a blackened piece of thread 

 through the skin with a needle, as with the Green- 

 landers. Their hair was done up in large plaits on 

 each side of the head, as described by Captain Parry 

 at Melville Peninsula. We noticed a practice here 

 amongst the women, similar to that which is com- 

 mon with the Arabs, which consisted of blacking 

 the edges of the eyelids with plumbago rubbed up 

 with a little saliva upon a piece of slate. All the 

 men had labrets, and both sexes had their teeth 

 much worn down, probably by the constant appli- 

 cation of them to hard substances, of which their 

 dresses, implements, and canoes are made. 



They had several rude knives, probably obtained 

 from the Tschutschi, some lumps of iron pyrites, 

 and pieces of amber strung round their neck ; but I 

 could not learn where they had procured them. 



As soon as we finished the necessary observations 

 with the artificial horizon, to the no small diversion 



