VISIT TO ICELAND 35 



new show was displayed, and the Indians were exceedingly 

 popular. They had lodgings in Leicester Street ; and 

 were taken to see St. Paul's Cathedral, and the Tower 

 (as Cookists of the period). But they could not be made 

 to understand much ; London Bridge, for example, 

 they looked upon as an abnormal piece of rock. They 

 pined for their glaciers and their snow-fields. At length, 

 on the eve of sailing away from Plymouth, the two men 

 died from fever and the two wives and a child went home. 



This episode brings into our pages a very interesting 

 and adventurous character : George Cartwright, author 

 of Journal of Transactions during a residence of sixteen 

 years in Labrador. Cartwright came from Nottingham- 

 shire. He was a gentleman cadet at Woolwich, one of 

 that class which does not learn its lessons, and is con- 

 sequently handicapped for life. He was in the East 

 Indies for a time, and later at the wars in Germany. 

 Poor, and evidently unthrifty, but fond of shooting and 

 sport, he drifted to Newfoundland, apparently for the 

 simple reason that his brother John was going thither, 

 as commander of the Guernsey, fifty guns. This was in 

 1765. He must have met Banks and Phipps during their 

 stay. He made six voyages out and home during his 

 sixteen years. It was on the second trip that he brought 

 the Indians to England. Cartwright appears to have been 

 under some money obligations to Banks, for there is an 

 expression of thanks in one of his letters for " giving him 

 time to discharge his bond." He sent a few curiosities 

 home to Banks, but speaks of them with apathy. He 

 never made a fortune, yet he doubtless enjoyed life 

 in his own way. A Hudson's Bay Company's post, 

 south from Hamilton Inlet, bears Cartwright's name to 

 this day. A portrait of him, in the costume of a trapper, 

 adorns the first volume of his Journal. 



Cartwright's short letters to Banks are sufficiently dole- 

 ful. But the writing of his book seems to have made 



