AVIIAT THEY DESIRE MOST. 
401 
wholesale slaughter more than ten minutes, and must 
now acknowledge that, after the first excitement of seeing 
so many fine fish caught had passed away, I was taken 
with a fit of begrudging disgust — if I may be allowed the 
expression — that rendered a further stay rather unpleasant 
than otherwise. We had been on salt provisions so long 
that it looked like sinful waste to destroy so many nolde 
fish in a few short minutes, while the pools of blood 
about the boards and the peculiar fishy odour that per- 
vaded the atmosphere gave rise to disgust: hence the 
combined feeling of “begrudging disgust.” 
Well, we left them, and, as avc did so, pointed to the 
piles of fish and then to the ship, giving them to under- 
stand that if they would bring some on board w'e would 
give them tobacco in exchange. They were like the 
Kamtchadales of the coal-mine village, — more in fixvour 
of trading for liquor than any other article; but this we 
did not encourage, simply from motives of Immaniiy ; and it 
is to be greatly regretted that all ships that break in thus 
upon their innocent solitude should not pursue a similar 
course of conduct. I cannot imagine a more weighty 
moral responsibility than that which attaches itself to the 
bearing of persons visiting, for the first time, tliese and 
similarly-benighted branches of the great human fixmily; 
and yet it seems to be an invariable fact that jxrimitive 
savages, in their first intercourse with the more cultivated 
members of their genus, are offered every thing calcu- 
lated to increase their degradation, Avhile all ennobling 
actions and truths are further than ever removed from 
their reach. But to return to Ola and the manner in 
which the simple natives complied with our intimation 
26 
