Dr King on the 
the same time, his finger to the point of his pencil, instead of 
a penknife, to the great diversion of his wife and daughter. 
Captain Beechy has not informed us ofthe extent of his talent 
as a portrait-painter ; but it appears that he omitted the hat 
which Captain Beechy wore, and he was extremely puzzled to 
know how to place it upon the head he had drawn. 
A lively little boy of Melville Peninsula, of four years of age, 
performed an aping trick after nearly the same fashion. Havy- 
ing witnessed an officer noting down the names of persons and 
things in a memorandum-book, he took it up, with the pencil, 
and then walked to every person in the hut, and gravely asked 
him his name, affecting, at the same time, to write it down ;* 
and a very amusing application of the art was practised by a 
native of the River Clyde. Sir Edward Parry had placed him 
on a stool for the purpose of taking his portrait; and as he 
from time to time became weary, he was reminded to keep his 
position by Sir Edward Parry putting himself in the proper at- 
titude, and assuming a grave and demure look. These actions 
the native always imitated in such a manner as to create con- 
siderable diversion among all present, and then very quietly 
kept his seat.t The mimicry of the Esquimaux, however, is 
said to be complete when the women form themselves into 
groups in order to gossip and talk scandal; they then ape 
in perfection the manner of the persons of whom they speak, 
interlarding at the same time their stories with jokes at the 
expense of the absentees, though to their own infinite amuse- 
ment. { 
The natives of Kotzebue Sound are considered by Captain 
Beechy very superior to the South Sea Islanders in recognising 
plates of natural history, if they represent those creatures with 
which they are acquainted—a talent which Sir Edward Parry 
turned to good account at Melville Peninsula, by obtaining 
from a native woman named [ligluik, a knowledge of the ha- 
bitat of the Larus sabina, a species of gull which led to his 
adding that rara avis to his natural historical collection. The 
same intelligence was observed among others of the same 
* Lyon’s Private Journal. + Parry’s First Expedition. 
{ Parry’s Second Expedition. § Ibid. 
