272 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



1822. afforded by them. The interior of the tents may be described in few words. 



i^Zl, On one side of the end next the door is the usual stone lamp resting on 

 any other rough stones, with the ootkooseek or cooking-pot suspended over 

 it; and round this are huddled together in great confusion the rest of the 

 women's utensils, together with great lumps of raw sea-horse flesh and blub- 

 ber, which at this season they enjoyed in most disgusting abundance. At 

 the inner end of the tent, which is also the broadest, and occupying about 

 one-third of the whole apartment, their skins are laid as a bed, having under 

 them some of the andromeda tetragom when the ground is hard, but in this 

 case placed on the bare dry shingle. Comfortless as these simple habitations 

 appeared to us in a snow-storm, they are in general not deficient in warmth 

 as summer residences ; and being easily removed from place to place, they are 

 certainly well suited to the wants and habits of this wandering people. 

 When a larger habitation than usual is required they contrive, by putting 

 two of these together, to form a sort of double tent, somewhat resembling a 

 marquee, and supported by two poles. The difference between these tents 

 and the one I had seen in Lyon Inlet the preceding autumn, struck me as 

 remarkable, these having no ivall of stones around them, as is usual in many 

 that we have before met with, nor do I know their reason for adopting this 

 different mode of construction. 



Even if it were not the natural and happy disposition of these people to be 

 pleased, and to place implicit confidence wherever kind treatment is experi- 

 enced, that confidence would soon have been ensured by our knowledge of their 

 friends and relations to the southward, and the information which we were 

 enabled to give respecting their late and intended movements. This, while it 

 excited in them extreme surprise, served also at once to remove all distrust or 

 apprehension, so that we soon found ourselves on the best terms imaginable. 

 In return for all this interesting information, they gave us the names of the 

 different portions of land in sight, many of which being recognised in their 

 countrymen's charts, we no longer entertained a doubt of our being near the 

 eastern entrance of the strait to which all our hopes were directed. We 

 now found also that a point of land in sight, a few miles to the southward of 

 the tents, was near that marked Ping-it-M-lik on Ewerat's Chart, and that 

 therefore the low shore along which we had been constantly sailing the 

 preceding night, was certainly a part of the Continent. 



By the time we had distributed most of our presents, and told some long 

 Stories about Winter-Island, to all which they listened with eager delight and 



