VOL. LX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRAXSACTIONS. 23 



as follows : " I have had, whilst at Churchill, a good opportunity of learning 

 the disposition of those people ; as several of them came almost every year, by 

 their own free will, to reside at the factory ; and can with truth aver, that never 

 people less deserved the epithets of " treacherous, cruel, fawning, and suspi- 

 cious ;" the contrary of which is remarkably true in every particular. They are 

 open, generous, and unsuspecting; addicted too much, it must be owned, to 

 passion, and too apt to revenge what they think an injury, if an opportunity 

 offers at that moment ; but are almost instantly cool, without requiring any 

 acknowledgement on your part, which they account shameful, and I verily be- 

 lieve, never remember the circumstance afterwards. Mr. Ellis observes, " That 

 they are apt to pilfer from strangers, easily encouraged to a degree of boldness ; 

 but as easily frightened." Now I cannot help thinking that he would have con- 

 veyed a much better idea of them if he had expressed himself thus : They are 

 bold and enterprising even to enthusiasm, while there is a probability of success 

 crowning their endeavours ; but wise enough to desist, when inevitable destruc- 

 tion stares them in the face. Perhaps few people have a greater genius for arts, 

 which shows itself in every one of their implements, but particularly in their 

 boats, harpoons, darts, bows and snow-eyes, which last are most excellently 

 contrived for preserving the eyes from the effect of the snow in the spring. But 

 a volume might be written on these subjects, and perhaps not unentertaining. 



I beg leave to mention, says Mr. W., what I apprehend to be a mistake in 

 Crantz's history of Greenland, where he says that those pieces of ice which are 

 of a vitriol colour are salt, and consist of salt water frozen to ice ; but I can, 

 from my own experience, assert, that when the salt water, which they catch by 

 the sea washing over them, is wiped clean off", they are entirely fresh. I will not 

 take upon me \o say that they are not made from salt water ; but if they are, it 

 must have deposited all its salts before it was frozen to ice. 



July 27, Mr. W. counted 58 islands of ice, all going directly across the Straits 

 from the mouth of the above-mentioned inlet, at the rate of several miles per 

 hour. From this one circumstance, says Mr. W. we have an irrefragable argu- 

 ment to prove the impossibility of Capt. Middleton's hypothesis, relating to the 

 very slow progressive motion of these islands, and the long time which they 

 take up in dissolving. For, admitting his hypothesis to be true, and that there 

 were no other islands of ice but what came out of this bay ; not only Hudson's 

 Straits, but even all the adjacent sea would in a very few years be so entirely 

 choaked up with them, that it would be impossible to force a ship among them, 

 could a master of one be found so imprudent as to venture ; which must be in- 

 evitable destruction. The truth is, their motion and dissolution are apparently 

 so very quick, that I am of opinion it must be a pretty large island which is not 

 dissolved in one summer. How Capt. Middleton could drop into such a pal- 



