524 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



committed on their property. The licking of the articles received from 

 us was not so common with them as with Esquimaux in general, and this 

 practice was latterly almost entirely left off by them. 



Among the unfavourable traits in their character must be reckoned an 

 extreme disposition to envy, which displayed itself on various occasions 

 during our intercourse with them. If we had made any presents in one 

 hut, the inmates of the next would not fail to tell us of it, accompanying 

 their remarks with some satirical observation, too unequivocally expressed to 

 be mistaken, and generally by some stroke of irony * directed against the 

 favoured person. If any individual with whom we had been intimate hap- 

 pened to be implicated in a theft, the circumstance became a subject of 

 satisfaction too manifest to be repressed, and we were told of it with ex- 

 pressions of the most triumphant exultation on every occasion. It Avas 

 indeed curious, though ridiculous, to observe that, even among these simple 

 people, and in this obscure corner of the globe, that little gossip and scandal 

 so commonly practised in small societies among us were very frequently 

 displayed. This was especially the case with the women, of whom it was 

 not uncommon to see a group sitting in a hut for hours together, each 

 relating her quota of information, now and then mimicking the persons 

 of whom they spoke, and interlarding their stories with jokes evidently 

 at the expense of their absent neighbours, though to their own infinite 

 amusement. 



In extenuation, however, of these faults, it must be allowed that we were 

 ourselves the exciting cause which called them into action, and without 

 which they would be comparatively of rare occurrence among them. Like 

 every other child of Adam, they undoubtedly possess their share of the 

 seeds of these human frailties ; but even in this respect they need not shrink 

 from a comparison with ourselves, for who among us can venture to assure 

 himself that, if exposed to similar temptations, he would not be found 

 wanting ? 



To another failing, to which they are addicted, the same excuse will not so 

 forcibly apply ; as in this respect our acquaintance with them naturally fur- 

 nished an opportunity for the practice of a virtue, rather than for the deve- 

 lopment of its opposite vice. I have already, in the course of the fore- 

 going Narrative, hinted at the want of gratitude evinced by these people in 



* Crantz, I. 170. 



