HAYES' EXPEDITION (i860) 55 



Standing close in under Cape York, Hayes kept a 

 careful look-out for natives. He wished if possible to 

 ascertain whether Hans of the Kane expedition was there. 

 In this he was successful. Hayes writes : — 



" Six years' experience among the wild men of this 

 barren coast had brought him to their level of filthy 

 ugliness. His companions were his wife, who carried her 

 first-born in a hood upon her back ; her brother, a bright- 

 eyed boy of twelve years, and ' an ancient dame with 

 voluble and flippant tongue, 1 her mother. They were 

 all dressed in skins, and, being the first Esquimaux we 

 had seen whose habits remained wholly uninfluenced by 

 contact with civilisation, they were, naturally, objects of 

 much interest to us all. 



" Hans led us up the hillside, over rough rocks and 

 through deep snow-drifts, to his tent. It was pitched 

 about 200 feet above the level of the sea, in a most 

 inconvenient position for a hunter ; but it was his ' look- 

 out. 1 Wearily he had watched, year after year, for the 

 hoped-for vessel ; but summer after summer passed and 

 the vessel came not, and he still sighed for his southern 

 home and the friends of his youth. 



" His tent was a sorry habitation. It was made after 

 the Esquimaux fashion, of seal-skins, and was barely large 

 enough to hold the little family who were grouped 

 about us. 



" I asked Hans if he would go with us. 



" ' Yes ! ' 



" Would he take his wife and baby ? 



" ' Yes ! ' 



" Would he go without them ? 



" ' Yes ! ' 



" Having no leisure to examine critically into the state 

 of his mind, and having an impression that the permanent 

 separation of husband and wife is regarded as a painful 



