THE LANDING. 
39 
rank ; the women, with their infants on their hacks, 
came next ; and behind them, in yelling phalanx, the 
children. Still further hack were crowds of dogs, 
seated on their haunches, and howling in unison with 
their masters. 
The one feeling which, I venture to say, pervaded 
us all, to the momentary exclusion of every thing else, 
was disgust. Offal was strewn around without regard 
to position ; scabs of drying seal-meat were spread over 
the rocks ; oil and blubber smeared every thing, from 
the dogs’ coats to their masters’ ; a ni mal refuse tainted 
all we saw ; and we afterward found, while botaniz- 
ing among the snow valleys, bones of the seal, wal- 
rus, and whale, buried in the mosses. 
But if filth characterized the open air, what was it 
in the habitations ! One poor family had escaped to 
their summer tent, pitched upon an adjacent rock that 
overlooked the sea. Within a little area of six feet 
by eight, I counted a father, mother, grandfather, and 
four children, a tea-kettle, a rude box, two rifles, and 
a litter of puppies. 
This island is used by the Danes as a sort of fishing 
station, where one European, generally a carpenter or 
cooper, presides over a few families of Esquimaux, who 
live by the chase of the seal. This functionary had 
a hut built of timber, which we yisited. Except the 
oil-house, which we had observed before, it was the 
only wooden edifice. ■ 
The natives, if the amalgamation of Dane and Es- 
quimaux can be called such, spend their summer in 
the reindeer tent, their winters in the semi-subterra- 
nean hut. These last have not been materially im- 
proved since the days of Egede and Fahricius. A 
square inclosure of stone or turf is raftered over with 
