408 SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



1823. ^vcnt out to briiiiif Koocctsccaiioo on board, 1 made another cifort to ascer- 



1 eliruarv . . , . 



^-'-N-^ tain this unfortunate creature's real situation; and as soon as I had arranged 

 about the young man's removal, went into Nuyakka's hut, to make inquiries 

 respecting her. On asking his wife to shew me Kaga's apartment, she 

 laughed rather sneeringly, but did not comply with my request ; and had it 

 not been for little Shega, who was by at the time and immediately offered 

 herself as my guide, I should not easily have accomplished my object. 

 Being preceded, however, by this good-natured child, I crept on hands and 

 knees through a narrow low passage about ten feet long, at the end of which 

 she pointed still onwards, and producing a knife, brought expressly for the 

 purpose, fell to work in removing a large slab of snow that covered the door- 

 way. Shega then retired, and I with much difficulty pushed myself forward 

 through the low and narrow entrance. The misery which now presented 

 itself to my view was such that, though it will not easily be effaced from 

 my memory, I am at a loss to convey by description any adequate idea of it. 

 The hut was constructed of snow, in the usual form, but without a window ; 

 and the light of a miserable single-wicked lamp was just sufficient to inter- 

 cept the daylight by blackening the roof, to fill the apartment with smoke, 

 and to render the wretchedness as well as "the darkness visible." The 

 diameter of this habitation was about six feet, and its height from four 

 to five. At one end of the bed-place lay the wretched Kaga, with a 

 stream of blood that seemed to have come from her mouth, frozen, 

 together with part of her hair, along the front of the bank of snow 

 that formed the bed-place. After several ineffectual attempts to gain her 

 attention, in the course of which I began to doubt whether she still lived, 

 she at length, with much apparent difficulty, turned her head and exhibited 

 a face which it was scarcely possible to recognise. Her eyes were now 

 much closed, and even the half-smothered flame of a single wick in the 

 lamp near her head seemed oppressive to her sight. In hopes of obtaining 

 some information respecting her bodily complaints, I asked her several ques- 

 tions ; but her answers, when she made any, were uttered in so slow and 

 indistinct a tone of voice, that I could not understand a syllable of them. 

 Beginning now seriously to feel the effects of the offensive atmosphere of 

 the hut, which, if the nature of it could be described, would be little less 

 disgusting in the description than in the reality, I was under the necessity 

 of quitting this scene of human wretchedness, which exceeded any thing my 

 imagination could possibly have pictured. On my returning to Niisea/c, the 



