172 ESQUIMAUX. 



marks were made, on the chin, particularly, and 

 on the hands. His reply was, when the girls 

 were marriageable, and espoused to their hus- 

 bands ; who had generally but one wife, though 

 good hunters had sometimes two. Wishing to 

 know whether they ever abandoned the aged and 

 the infirm to perish like the Northern Indians, 

 he said, never ; assuring me that they always 

 dragged them on sledges with them in winter 

 to the different points where they had laid up 

 provisions in the autumn, ' en cache ; ' and that 

 they took them in their canoes in summer till 

 they died. Knowing that some Indians west 

 of the rocky mountains burn their dead, I 

 asked him if this custom prevailed with the Es- 

 quimaux, he said, no ; and that they always 

 buried theirs. The name of this Esquimaux 

 was Achshannook, and as Augustus could write 

 a little, which he had been taught during the 

 time he was with the expedition, I gave him my 

 pencil, that the other might see what I wished to 

 teach the Esquimaux children, as well as to read 

 white man's book, which told us true of the 

 Great Spirit, whom the Esquimaux did not 

 know, and how they were to live and die happy. 

 The woman immediately caught up her little 

 girl about five years of age, and holding her to- 

 wards me manifested the greatest delight, with 



