OF ALL COUNTRIES. 493 



garments, and its very excrement is used as colouring 

 matter. The inhabitants of those savage and desolate 

 parts are greatly indebted to fishing for the support of 

 their existence. During the whole of the long summer 

 day they are engaged either in this pursuit or else in 

 hunting. Whales, seals, and dog-fish afford them food, 

 clothes, and even shelter, for their summer tents are made 

 of the skin of the latter ; and their frocks, their boots, and 

 their stockings are manufactured from the entrails. A 

 strange taste also leads them to prefer the blood of the 

 dog-fish to any other less horrible beverage. The canoes 

 of these tribes are of two kinds, and betray some ingenuity 

 in construction, for they consist of pieces of wood fastened 

 together in thongs, and being covered with sealskin are so 

 pliable and elastic that they can weather the roughest 

 sea. The larger, called the uniak, is flat-bottomed, and 

 serves to convey the families from one place to another. 

 The smaller canoe, or rajak, is used for the pursuit of the 

 fish. These latter boats have room for one man only, who 

 sits in a hole made in the middle of the upper surface, 

 which he covers wjfh his frock so as to prevent any water 

 from entering. One oar, six or seven feet in length, is his 

 only instrument of progression, and yet a man will, in this 

 fashion, row sixty or seventy miles a day, about the same 

 distance as an Indian will walk in snow-shoes. 



The external concomitants of whaling soon promised to 

 become as exciting as the incidents connected with the 

 pursuit itself. For fourteen years the English managed to 

 keep this splendid gold mine, as they were wont with perfect 

 truth to describe it, all to themselves ; but such a monopoly 

 could not in the nature of things be made to last for ever. 

 In 1 612 the Dutch sent some vessels to work in the adja- 



