8 



Their plighted promise safely you may trust. 

 Mind you deceive them not, for well they know 

 The friend sincere from the designing foe. 

 They once were deemed a people fierce and rude, 

 Their savage hands in human blood imbued; 

 But by my care (for I must claim the merit) 

 The world now owes that virtue they inherit. 

 Not a more honest or more generous race 

 Can bless a sovereign or a nation grace. 

 With these I frequent pass the social day, 

 No broils, no feuds, but all is sport and play. 

 My will's their law, and justice is my will. 

 Thus friends we always were and friends are still." 



With an idea of impressing the Eskimo with the importance 

 of the English, whom they held in contempt with all other 

 "kablunait," Cartwright took a few of his oldest Eskimo friends 

 to London. They were greatly astonished at the sights they saw, 

 but soon grew homesick. One said, "Oh, I am tired! Here are 

 too many houses, too much smoke, too many people. Labrador 

 is very good; seals are plentiful there. I wish I was back again." 

 The inevitable happened. They all contracted smallpox, and 

 only one woman, Caubvick, lived to see her old home. 



On Cartwright's return to Labrador, they were met by a 

 large crowd of Eskimo who had gathered to greet their friends. 

 When only Caubvick appeared, their grief was unrestrained. 

 "Many of them snatched up stones and beat themselves on the 

 face and head until they became shocking spectacles." "In 

 short," says Cartwright, "the violent frantic expressions of grief 

 were such that I could not help participating with them so far 

 as to shed tears myself most plentifully." But it is quite char- 

 acteristic of the Eskimo that "they no sooner observed my 

 emotion than, mistaking it for apprehensions which I was under 

 for fear of their resentment, they instantly seemed to forget their 

 own feelings to relieve those of mine. They pressed around me, 

 and said and did all in their power to convince me that they did 

 not entertain any suspicions of my conduct toward their departed 

 friends." 



