CONFERENCE. 
441 
more sagacious and the stronger. It was apparent 
that our savage friends had their plaint to make, or, it 
might be, to avenge. 
“My first attention, after ministering to the imme¬ 
diate wants of all, was turned to the office of conciliatr 
ing our Esquimaux benefactors. Though they wore 
their habitual faces of smiling satisfaction, I could read 
them too well to be deceived. Policy as well as moral 
duty have made me anxious always to deserve their 
respect; but I had seen enough of mankind in its 
varied relations not to know that respect is little else 
than a tribute to superiority either real or supposed,— 
and that among the rude at least, one of its elements 
is fear. 
“I therefore called them together in stern and 
cheerless conference on the deck, as if to inquire into 
the truth of transactions that I had heard of, leaving 
it doubtful from my manner which was the party I 
proposed to implicate. Then, by the intervention of 
Petersen, I called on Kalutunah for his story, and went 
through a full train of questionings on both sides. It 
was not difficult to satisfy them that it was my 
purpose to do justice all round. The subject of con¬ 
troversy was set out fully, and in such a manner as to 
convince me that an appeal to kind feeling might have 
been substituted with all effect for the resort to artifice 
or force. I therefore, to the immense satisfaction of 
our stranger guests, assured them of my approval, and 
pulled their hair all around. 
“They were introduced into the oriental recess of 
