186 ARCTIC VOYAGES. Chap. VI. 



Had they not indeed, on many occasions, been sup- 

 plied from the ships, numbers of them must un- 

 doubtedly have perished of hunger. All the bread 

 dust was collected and preserved for their use ; yet 

 in the height of their distress they appeared never 

 to be deprived of that happy and cheerful temper 

 of mind, and that good humour which they na- 

 turally possessed, and preserved, even when severely 

 pinched by hunger and cold, and wholly deprived 

 for days together of food, and light, and fuel, priva- 

 tions to which they were constantly liable. But 

 no calamity of this kind, frequently as it occurs, 

 has taught them to be provident. They live but 

 from day to day : with them it is always a feast or 

 a famine; they will eat, at any period of the day, 

 when victuals are to be had, from fiye to eight 

 pounds of animal food. From May to October, 

 when the migratory animals have arrived from the 

 southward, the musk-ox, the rein-deer, the hares, 

 the swans, and various other fowls and quadrupeds, 

 they are able to procure a good supply of food ; 

 and those few who add frugality to their industry, 

 contrive to pound the flesh with the fat of the ani- 

 mal, and make a little of what they call pemmican, 

 for preservation — a compound well known to our 

 Arctic voyagers. In the early part of April some 

 of the tribe that frequented the Winter Island began 

 to migrate from the sea-shore to the westward, in 

 quest of food; and the change of scene in their 

 once happy village, and more especially in their 



