toss OF AN ENGLISH SLOOP. 139 
people ; the women in particular eyed it with extreme avidi- 
ty ; and when I had presented each of them with a guinea, 
they set up a loud laugh, that being the way in which the 
Indians express extraordinary emotions of joy. 
However exorbitant their pretensions might be, I deter- 
mined to spare nothing to save my countrymen, if any of 
them were still alive. We, therefore, concluded an agree- 
ment, by which they engaged to depart the following day, and 
I was to give them tv/enty-five guineas before they set off, 
and the same sum on their return. They immediately fell to 
work to make shoes fit for walking upon the snow, both for 
themselves and our seamen, whom they were to bring back. 
Early the next morning they departed, after receiving the sti- 
pulated sum. 
From the moment the savages saw gold in my possession, 
my situation lost all the charms which it owed to their hos- 
pitality. They became as rapacious as they had before beeni 
generous, requiring ten times the value of the smallest articles 
with which they furnished my companions and me. I was 
fearful, too, lest this excessive passion for money, which they 
had contracted from their intercourse with the Europeans, 
should impel them to rob us, and leave us in the same deplo- 
rable situation from which we had been rescued by their as- 
sistance. The only motive on which I grounded the hope of 
more humane treatment was the religion they had embraced, 
having been converted to Christianity by the French Jesuits, 
before this island was ceded to us together with Canada. 
They showed the strongest attachment to their new faith, and 
frequently stunned us in the evening by their doleful psalmody. 
My servant was a particular favorite with them all, because, 
being an Irish Catholic, he joined their prayers, though he 
did not understand a single word of them. I much doubt 
whether they themselves could understand them, for their 
singing, or rather shouting, was a confused jargon, composed 
of bad French and their savage idiom, with a few Latin 
phrases which they had learned from their missionaries. 
We were many days before we recovered our strength, or 
were capable of digesting any substantial food. The only 
nourishment the Indians could procure us was elk flesh and 
seal-oil, upon which they live entirely during the hunting 
season. 
Though the remembrance of so many past miseries caused 
us to bless the change in our situation, and reconciled us to 
our residence among the savages, yet I felt very anxious to 
