THE WHITE WORLD 



largest of the igloos; and all of the adults could read and 

 write, though their outward garb was the traditional one 

 which had characterized the people from the earliest times. 



On Saturday the weather was unpropitious. The wind 

 blew hard, and the air was full of fog and drizzly rain. We 

 were able to do little but sit in our tent and cultivate the 

 acquaintance of our strange but kindly and well-disposed 

 neighbors. They were curious to see everything we had, 

 and to know both what it was and what is was for. It must 

 be confessed also that we were equally curious to learn 

 everything about them. In token of their good will, the 

 women and children brought us an abundant supply of 

 moss and crowberry vines with which to carpet our tent 

 and to disguise the hardness of our rocky floor. 



Sunday morning came, and it was still cold and rainy. 

 While we were eating our breakfast and shivering over our 

 coal-oil stove in the tent, a man of mild appearance and 

 diminutive stature came to the door with a hymn-book and 

 a Bible in his hands, and pointed to them to indicate, as 

 we surmised, that there was to be a religious service some- 

 where in the settlement. But he did not linger long, and 

 so silently disappeared that we did not see where he went, 

 and hence were at a loss to know where the service was 

 to be held, for the settlement was squalid in the extreme, 

 and no one of the three igloos seemed better than the 

 others. 



But on going down to our boats we heard singing in one 

 of the huts. Stooping down before the low door and push- 

 ing it open, and crawling through a long, narrow passage- 

 way to the assembly room on our hands and knees, we 

 were welcomed by motions into the most interesting 

 church service I ever attended or expect ever to attend. 

 To our eyes the room in itself was dreary beyond descrip- 

 tion. The low walls of stone and turf were reeking with 

 moisture, while water distilled freely from the sod roof in 

 various places, and, as one walked along the passageways, 

 spurted up from the crevices between the loose stones 

 with which the floor was covered. The only dry place was 

 the shelf, elevated about a foot, on the north side of the 

 room, which for the regular inmates was their sleeping 

 place by night and their lounging place by day. A cylin- 





