LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
265 
the partition sometimes of a single grouse was regarded with 
feelings very much akin to those, which a pack of schoolboys 
exhibit on the cutting up of a twelfth-cake, each fearing that 
another may obtain the largest share. 
There was scarcely a single instance during the stay of the 
Victory in Felix Harbour, of an Esquimaux coming individually 
to the ship, but on the morning of the 24th, a woman was ob¬ 
served approaching, unaccompanied by any of her tribe, and with 
an assurance, which indicated that she had come upon some 
special purpose. She ascended the gangway, and placed herself 
close to the companion hatchway, as if she had almost a right, 
to assume the station, which she had selected. Considering the 
savage mode of life to which she was addicted, and the total 
absence of all cultivation mental or personal, in which she had 
lived from her earliest days, there was a majesty in her demeanor, 
and an intelligence beaming in her eye, which stamped her at 
once the superior amongst her fellows, and declared that she was 
one of those, whom nature selects amongst a horde, like the genius 
in civilized life, to give them by the force of their intellect, 
power, dominion and influence over the more rude and ignorant 
of their species. It appeared that the imputation, which Com¬ 
mander Ross had thrown upon her tribe, that they were Tiklig - 
tokes, or thieves, had rankled in the mind of this extraordinary 
woman, and on finding an iron belaying pin, which had been 
taken away by one of her associates, she resolved to take upon 
herself the office of restoring it, and drawing it from under her 
vestment, she laid it upon the binnacle, with an air of hauteur, 
as if she defied every one to cast any further imputation upon her 
tribe. Capt. Ross being informed of the arrival of this woman, 
whose name was Okkaru, the word signifying a tongue in the 
Esquimaux language, and which was bestowed upon her on 
account of her eloquential powers, she was admitted into the 
cabin, and her demeanor there soon betrayed the superior strength 
of her intellect, by the total absence of that vacant wonder, which 
always distinguishes the uncultivated savage, on his first intro¬ 
duction to the objects of science and of civilized life. She 
seated herself in a chair without stopping for an invitation, and 
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