LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS 
247 
and when on a journey are never suffered to eat until they arrive 
at the end of it. 
Some idea may be formed of the extreme stupidity of these 
people when it is related, that few of them could be taught to 
count beyond five, and not one of them beyond ten, nor could 
their simple minds be brought to entertain the slightest idea, of 
the meaning of our term, to-morrow. When they spoke of per¬ 
forming a certain action at no very distant period,—they never 
said, We will do it to-morrow, but, We will do it when we 
have slept, this mode of expression is however in a great degree to 
be accounted for from the circumstance, that if their day was to be 
calculated like ours, by the rising and setting of the sun, and on 
which our term to-morrow depends, it would be found impossible 
to apply that epithet to a period, which could not take place for 
three months, or in other words, as their night is of three months 
duration, during which time not a single glimpse of the sun is 
to be seen, they could not consistently with that circumstance, 
affix any other definite time for the performance of an action than 
what was to be regulated by those acts, which they performed at 
stated periods, without any reference to the rising or setting of 
the sun, by which any horological information as to the regular 
lapse of time could be imparted to them. 
An Esquimaux may in some respects be said to be the connect¬ 
ing link between the human and animal creation. The human 
animal seems merely to live for the gratification of his appetites, 
which having satiated, he yields himself up to sleep, and only 
wakes to go in search of a fresh supply of food, the surplus of 
which his instinct teaches him to hoard up, as a preventive 
against future want. The Esquimaux, knows no stated time of 
rest during his long and dreary winter, when the bear, the 
wolf and the fox are the only animals which prowl round his 
habitation ; he is in almost every respect an hibernating animal, 
dosing away the hours in listless inactivity, until the return of 
the sun, which rouses him from his torpor, and breathes into 
him the spirit of a renewed existence. Many were the proofs, 
which the crew of the Victory received of the utter degradation 
of these semi-animals, and in their attempts to instil any kind 
