Voyage of Discovery to the Arctic Regions . 195 
an adze in miniature, and they exhibited several beads different 
from those they had acquired on board. The fiord where they 
lived is full of small islands. It has 180 fathoms of water with- 
in the entrance of it, and not above a mile from the shore, and 
it appeared to be about four or five miles broad. Their winter 
huts were seen about two miles farther up the bay than their 
tents. They were partly excavated from a bank facing the sea, 
and the rest built round with stones. 
In studying the character of this rude people, it is impossible 
to read, without the highest satisfaction, the following account 
which Captain Parry has given of their circumstances and man- 
ners. 
■" Upon the whole, these people may be considered in posses- 
sion of every necessary of life, as well as of most of the comforts 
and conveniencies which can be enjoyed in so rude a state of socie- 
ty. 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 re- 
spectful 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 intolerable filth, by which 
these people are so generally distinguished. But the superiority for 
which they are the most remarkable, is the perfect honesty which 
characterised 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 
temptations to steal from us was perhaps stronger than we can well 
imagine, and the opportunity for 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 
pleasing in itself than honourable to these simple people.” — Captain 
Parry’s journal, p. 287* 
On the 8th of September, the expedition proceeded south- 
ward, the Hecla arrived in Leith Roads on the 3d November, 
after an absence of eighteen months, and Captain Parry had 
the high satisfaction of seeing every officer and man on board 
both ships (with only one exception, out of ninety-four per- 
sons,) return to their native country in as robust health as when 
they left it. 
In reading the details of this celebrated expedition, it is im- 
possible not to admire the high qualifications which Captain 
Parry exhibited as a navigator and Commander. The con- 
