OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 



545 



quimaux at Igloolik to abandon their tents, and to retire into their more 

 established village. The majority were here crowded into huts of a perma- 

 nent construction, the materials composing the sides being stones and the 

 bones of whales, and the roofs being formed of skins, turf, and snow ; the 

 rest of the people were lodged in snow-huts. For a while they continued 

 very healthy ; in fact as long as the temperature of the interior did not exceed 

 the freezing point, the vapours of the atmosphere congealed upon the walls, 

 and the air remained dry and tolerably pure ; besides, their hard-frozen 

 winter stock of walrus did not at this time tempt them to indulge their 

 appetites immoderately. In January the temperature suffered an unseason- 

 able rise, some successful captures of walrus also took place, and these 

 circumstances, combined perhaps with some superstitious customs of which 

 we were ignorant, seemed the signal for giving way to sensuality. The 

 lamps were accumulated and the kettles more frequently replenished, and 

 gluttony in its most disgusting form became for a while the order of the day. 

 The Esquimaux were now seen wallowing in filth, while some surfeited lay 

 stretched upon their skins enormously distended, and with their friends 

 employed In rolling them about to assist the operations of oppressed nature. 

 The roofs of their huts were no longer congealed, but dripping with Avet and 

 threatening speedy dissolution. The air was in the bone-huts damp, hot, 

 and beyond sufferance offensive with putrid exhalations from the decomposing 

 relics of offals, or other animal matter permitted to remain from year to year, 

 undisturbed in these horrible sinks. 



" What the consequences might have been had this state of affairs long 

 continued it is not difficult to imagine ; but fortunately for them an early 

 and gradual dispersion took place, so that by the end of January few indi- 

 viduals were left in the village. The rest in divided bodies established 

 themselves in snow-huts upon the sea-ice at some distance from the land. 

 Before this change had been completed disorders of an inflammatory charac- 

 ter had appeared. A few went away sick, some were unable to remove, and 

 others taken ill upon the ice, and we heard of the death of several about this 

 period. 



" The cold snow-huts into which they had moved, though infinitely prefer- 

 able to those abandoned, were ill suited to the reception of people already 

 sick or predisposed, from the above-named causes, to sickness ; many of 

 them were also deficient in clothing to meet the rigorous weather that fol- 

 lowed. Nevertheless after this violent excitement had passed away a com- 



4 A 



