PACIFIC AND BEERING’S STRAIT. 
297 
we should be. So far from this party having any objection to our CHAP, 
books, to which the former one had manifested the greatest repugnance, 
they took pleasure in seeing them, and were very attentive to the Sept, 
manner in which every thing was committed to paper. The daughters 
were fat good-looking girls ; the eldest, about thirteen years of age, was 
marked upon the chin with a single blue line ; but the other, about ten, 
was without any tattooing. I made a sketch of the eldest girl, very 
much to the satisfaction of the mother, who was so interested in having 
her daughter’s picture, and so impatient to see it finished, that she 
snatched away the paper several times to observe the progress I was 
making. The father entered the tent while this was going forward, 
and observing what I was about, called to his son to bring him a piece 
of board J;hat was lying outside the tent, and to scrape it clean, which 
was very necessary indeed. Having procured a piece of plumbago from 
his wife, he then seated himself upon a heap of skins, threw his legs 
across, and very good-humouredly commenced a portrait of me, aping 
my manner and tracing every feature with the most affected care, 
whimsically applying his finger to the point of his pencil instead of a 
penknife, to the great diversion of his wife and daughters. By the 
time I had finished my sketch, he had executed his, but with the 
omission of the hat, which, as he never wore one himself, he had en- 
tirely forgotten ; and he was extremely puzzled to know how to place 
it upon the head he had drawn. 
On meeting with the Esquimaux, after the first salutation is over 
an exchange of goods invariably ensues, if the party have any thing to 
sell, which is almost always the case ; and we were no sooner seated in 
the tent than the old lady produced several bags, from which she drew 
forth various skins, ornamental parts of the dress of her tribe, and small 
ivory dolls, allowing us to purchase whatever we hked. Our articles 
of barter were necklaces of blue beads, brooches, and cutlery, which 
no sooner came into the possession of our hostess than they were 
transferred to a stone vessel half filled with train-oil, where they un- 
derwent an Esquimaux purification. 
We found amongst this party a small Russian coin of the Empress 
Q, Q 
