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ARCTIC RESEARCH EXPEDITION. 



Esquimaux tent ! I replied, 1 1 do ; but you have not tea here, 

 have you?' Drawing her hand from a little tin box, she display- 

 ed it full of fine-flavored black tea, saying, ' Do you like your tea 

 strong?' Thinking to spare her the use of much of this precious 

 article away up here, far from the land of civilization, I replied, 

 1 I'll take it weak, if you please.' A cup of hot tea was soon be- 

 fore me — capital tea, and capitally made. Taking from my pocket 

 a sea-biscuit which I had brought from the vessel for my dinner, 

 I shared it with my hostess. Seeing she had but one cup, I in- 

 duced her to share with me its contents. There, amid the snows 

 of the North, under an Esquimaux's hospitable tent, in company 

 with Esquimaux, for the first time I shared with them in that 

 soothing, cheering, invigorating emblem of civilization — T-E-A ! 

 Tookoolito says that she and her winga (husband) drink it nearly 

 every night and morning. They acquired a taste for it in Eng- 

 land, and have since obtained their annual supply from English 

 and American whalers visiting Northumberland Inlet. 



"By-the-by, Tookoolito said to me during the entertainment 

 just described, ' I feel very sorry to say that many of the whaling 

 people are very bad, making the Innuits bad too; they swear 

 very much, and make our people swear. I wish they would not 

 do so. Americans swear a great deal — more and worse than the En- 

 glish. I wish no one would swear. It is a very bad practice, I 

 believe.' 



1 'How, think you, beloved Americans, I felt with these hot coals 

 on my head ? Oh that every swearing man, and every saint, could 

 have seen and heard that Esquimaux woman as she spoke thus ! 

 I had just returned from a hard encounter with deep snow — fall- 

 ing snow, driven by almost a hurricane ; but, 0 God, give me a 

 thousand storms — worse, if they could be — rather than have the 

 like thundering in my ears again ! Her words, her looks, her voice, 

 her tears, are in my very soul still. Here, one of the iron daugh- 

 ters of the rocky, ice-ribbed North, standing like an angel, pleading 

 the cause of the true God, weeping for the sad havoc made and 

 making among her people by those of my countrymen who should 

 have been, and ever should be, the glorious representatives of 

 freedom, civilization, and Christianity ! It was too much ; I was a 

 child. I confess, I blushed for this stain upon my country's hon- 

 or — not only this, but for the wickedness diffused almost through- 

 out the unenlightened world by the instrumentality of whalers 

 hailing from civilized lands. 



