OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 
287 
produced, they immediately recognised them, and eagerly repeated the word i 820 . 
oomingmack, which at once satisfied us, that they knew the musk-ox, and that 
this was the animal spoken of by the Esquimaux of Greenland, under the 
same name, somewhat differently pronounced. 
To judge by their appearance, and what is perhaps a better criterion, the 
number of their children, there could be little doubt that the means of sub- 
sistence which they possess are very abundant; but of this we had more 
direct proof, by the quantity of sea-horses and seals which we found con- 
cealed under stones, along the shore of the north branch, as well as on 
Observation Island. Mr. Fife reported that, in sounding the north branch, 
he met with their winter-huts, about two miles above the tents on the 
same shore, and that they were partly excavated from a bank facing the sea, 
and the rest built round with stones. 
We saw no appearance of disease among the seventeen persons who 
inhabited the tents, except that the eyes of the old couple were rather blear, 
and a very young infant looked pale and sickly. The old man had a large 
scar on one side of his head, which he explained to us very clearly to be a 
wound he had received from a nennook (bear). Upon the whole, these people 
may be considered in possession of every necessary of life, as well as of most 
of the comforts and conveniences which can be enjoyed in so rude a state of 
society. In the situation and circumstances in which the Esquimaux of 
North Greenland are placed, there is much to excite compassion for the low 
state to which human nature appears to be there reduced ; a state in few 
respects superior to that of the bear or the seal, which they kill for their 
subsistence. But, with these, it was impossible not to experience a feeling 
of a more pleasing kind : there was a respectful decency in their general 
behaviour, which at once struck us as very different from that of the other 
untutored Esquimaux, and in their persons there was less of that in- 
tolerable filth by which these people are so generally distinguished. But 
the superiority for which they are the most remarkable is, the perfect honesty 
which characterized all their dealings with us. During the two hours that the 
men were on board, and for four or five hours that we were subsequently among 
them on shore, on both which occasions the temptation to steal from us was 
perhaps stronger than we can well imagine, and the opportunity of doing 
so by no means wanting, not a single instance occurred, to my knowledge, of 
their pilfering the most trifling article. It is pleasing to record a fact, no 
less singular in itself, than honourable to these simple people. 
