Chap. IV. PARRY'S FIRST VOYAGE. 117 



visits from a tribe of Esquimaux, whose appearance 

 and conduct pleased them all very much — lively, 

 good-natured, and cheerful, with a great inclination 

 to jump about when much pleased, "rendering it," 

 says Parry, "a penalty of no trifling nature for them 

 to sit still for half an hour together." They were 

 decently clothed, male and female, and their children 

 equally so, in well-dressed and neatly-sewn seal- 

 skins. They were, in fact, in all respects, infinitely 

 superior to Ross's Arctic Highlanders, who pulled 

 or rubbed noses as a salutation, and asked if ships 

 were not living creatures. But Parry shall himself 

 mark the contrast : — 



" Upon the whole, these people may be considered in pos- 

 session of every necessary of life, as well as of most of the 

 comforts and conveniences which can be enjoyed in so rude 

 a state of society. In the situation and circumstances in 

 which the Esquimaux of N. Greenland [Ross's Highlanders] 

 are placed, there is much to excite compassion for the low 

 state to which human nature appears to be there reduced — 

 a state in few respects superior to that of the bear or the 

 seal, which they kill for their subsistence. But with these 

 it was impossible not to experience a feeling of a more 

 pleasing kind : there was a respectful decency in their 

 general behaviour, which at once struck us as very different 

 from that of the other untutored Esquimaux ; and in their 

 persons there was less of that intolerable filth by which these 

 people are so generally distinguished. But the superiority 

 for which they are most remarkable is, the perfect honesty 

 which characterised all their dealings with us. During the 

 two hours that the men were on board, and for four or live 

 hours that we were subsequently among them on shore, on 



