308 Dr King on the 
others, that they preferred it cooked, when blessed with the 
means; that the wearing the hair in great disorder was 
almost a solitary exception, and not a general rule; that in 
contradiction to the terrifying face and animal and brutish 
exterior, I have quoted Cook, Parry, Franklin, Lyon, and 
Richardson; that if anything remarkable was observable 
in the beard, it was in deficiency, and not in excess ; that their 
winter garments were not made of seals’ skins, nor their 
summer dresses of the intestines of whales; that they were 
not skilful in the chace of sables, and did not either use its 
skin for clothes or for barter; for the very evident reason 
that no such animal is found in their country. 
And I now proceed to adduce additional facts, arranged 
under the head of intellectual character. It will thus be 
seen which of the philosophers are correct, whether Lord 
Kames, who states “‘ the women require compulsion to take 
upon them the troubles of a married life ;” I had almost 
forgotten Lord Byron who says in allusion to frigidity, “happy 
the nations of the moral north ;’,—or M. Lesson, who asserts 
that “their loose morality renders them addicted to polygamy, 
and indifferent to the virtue of their wives and daughters ;” 
whether they are “dull or stupid,’ as Vitruvius will have 
it; or “ degenerated almost to the lowest state compatible 
with the retention of rational endowments,”’ for which Dr 
Beke contends. The sucking of their own blood, and the 
suckling of their infants, with all the profound tenacious 
affection of animal maternity, scarcely demands attention, 
notwithstanding it appears in Dr Prichard’s work; but it 
may be necessary to state that the cause which Vitruvius 
assigns for their dulness and stupidity, “that of breathing 
a thick air,’ does not exist. The arctic atmosphere is as 
thin and as elastic as that of any part of the globe, and the 
sky is Italian. So free of moisture is the atmosphere during 
the winter that a few hours’ exposure of linen, wet from the 
wash-tub, renders it so dry as not to require airing prior 
to being worn. 
That the natives of Labrador were, to a certain extent, at 
the time Charlevoix wrote, the ferocious people he has de- 
scribed, I am not prepared to deny ; but I will neither admit 
that such is their general disposition, nor that the whole 
