Intellectual Character of the Esquimauz. 309 
race are to be accountable for so small a portion of the 
Esquimaux family. When they were visited by the Nor- 
wegians, and the early travellers, in search of a north-west 
passage, they were a peaceable and hospitable people ; and 
in return for a good disposition and friendly conduct to 
their discoverers and subsequent visitors, Thorsin, the Ice- 
lander, and Sir Martin Frobisher, our own countryman, as 
well as others, committed upon them the most gross acts of 
cruelty. The natives of Greenland were subject to the same 
inhuman treatment at the hands of both the Danes and the 
English ; and had that good man Hans Egede been a Charle- 
voix, these inoffensive people would, from their spirited re- 
taliation upon their enemies, have been branded with the 
same infamy that the French historian and Dr Prichard 
have endeavoured to fix upon the poor inhabitants of Labra- 
dor. But we can spare them the dreadful ordeal of public 
censure, for they also had an Egede in the person of Captain 
Cartwright,* who passed many years among them, yet Dr 
Prichard makes no allusion to that traveller. The Esqui- 
maux of Labrador, says Captain Cartwright, are “the best 
tempered people I ever met with, and most docile—a nation 
with whom I would sooner trust my person and property than 
that of any other.” 
Sir Edward Parry found the natives of Melville Peninsula 
entitled tothe same encomium. It is true that Hans Egede, 
of the natives of Greenland, and Sir Edward Parry and 
Captain Lyon, of those of Melville Peninsula, have borne 
testimony to the carelessness with which the aged and des- 
titute are treated ; but these people, we know, form exceptions 
to the nation at large, and their more erratic mode of life, 
compared with that of the rest of the race, is no doubt the 
cause of this; a kind of life which necessarily consigns the 
sick and infirm of all uncivilized races to desertion, and con- 
sequent starvation. Self preservation is inherent in man, 
civilized or uncivilized ; and I have no hesitation in saying, 
that it is self preservation which obliges the Esquimaux of 
Melville Peninsula to act as they do. 
* Cartwright’s Journal of his Residence on the Coast of Labrador. 
