400 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



-ebruary the travellin g P artv t( > *e ice. The road to this new village, to which be- 

 fore the middle of February all the people from the bone huts had removed, 

 was now worn as smooth as that between Igloolik and the ships, except 

 where it passed over the heavy hummocks and large cracks in the ice near, 

 the shore. The habitations here were exact counterparts of those at Winter, 

 Island ; and it was quite a relief to enter them, new and clean as they 

 were, after the filth of the more durable ones at Igloolik. The ice on 

 which the huts stood was near the edge of the squeezed-up or hummocky 

 kind, and, from the cracks close to them, was in all probability touching the 

 ground in most parts ; while outside of the village there was a smooth level 

 floe of considerable extent, over which they travelled to their fishery at its 

 margin, where open water still remained at the distance of three miles 

 from the shore. It seemed that they would for the sake of convenience 

 have carried their abodes further out to sea, but that it was not considered safe 

 to venture their whole establishment where the ice was liable to be broken off, 

 and drifted away by the tide. There are few people however who care less 

 for a walk of considerable length, if they have any object in view in ac- 

 complishing it, than the Esquimaux ; in proof of which, in addition to the 

 instances already adduced at Winter Island, it may be stated that, on some 

 of the most inclement days in this winter, many of the women, and several 

 of the children from eight to eleven years of age were in the habit of 

 walking to the ships and back again, a distance not less than fourteen miles, 

 and sometimes when the road was so covered by snow-drift that it required 

 constant attention to keep in the right track. 



On repassing the huts at Igloolik I went to see the parents and widow of 

 Piccooyak, who lived together in a hut of snow in a state of very great 

 wretchedness. The parents, both of them old and infirm, were sitting in 

 one corner with scarcely any clothes upon them, while Kaga lay in another, 

 moaning most lamentably, and almost entirely covered with some skins, of 

 which neither the kind nor original colour could be distinguished for the dirt 

 and grease with which they were besmeared. On my questioning her, she 

 after some time looked up and gave me to understand what indeed appeared 

 to be the case, that she was not ill but simply wretched ; and I could 

 plainly perceive that her misery in great part proceeded from the robbery of 

 most of her property, as described by Crantz to be the usual fate of widows 

 in Greenland *. Indeed of numerous presents which she and her husband 



* Crantz, I. 192. 



