286 LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
Ooblooraiak appeared, and as well as his rage would permit 
him, he made known to the assembled tribe the heinous crime 
which his “beloved bitch” had performed, and another proof was 
now given in addition to the many thousands that are recorded 
in every page of history, that let the guilt of an individual be 
ever so great, there will be found some, who will attempt to 
palliate it, and in some instances to exonerate the reputed crimi¬ 
nal altogether. It is however, in some respects, not with the 
Esquimaux as it is with the Kabloonas ; with the former the de¬ 
linquent had every one of her own sex to espouse her cause, they 
saw in her transgression, nothing more than what every one of 
them would have done under similar circumstances of strong 
temptation ; and without the light of Christianity to guide them 
on their way, or the power of education to influence their actions, 
they, from a natural bias, looked with an eye of indulgence and 
forbearance on the fault, which their fellow woman had com¬ 
mitted. and resolved to rescue the delinquent from the vengeance 
of her infuriated husband. With the Kabloonas on the contrary, 
small indeed is the mercy which is shown by a female to a fallen 
one of her own sex, and if she has stepped aside from the path 
of virtue in one particular direction, the damned sinner might 
as well look for mercy from the fiends of hell, as the female 
culprit from her sister woman. With the consciousness that the 
same crime cannot be imputed to herself, for the best of all reasons 
perhaps, that her virtue has never been tempted, nor her heart 
been ignited by the fire of an ardent love, she assumes to 
herself the character of the spotless saint, and thinks herself 
entitled on every occasion, to splutter forth the effusions of her 
indignation and contempt for the individual, who, after all, has 
only shown herself in obedience to the laws of nature and her 
God. 
The Esquimaux is the child of nature, the European the mechan¬ 
ical subject of education and civilization, and we require not at 
the present day, the eloquence of Jean Jaques to show us the 
relative superiority of the two characters when taken in the ab¬ 
stract, and wider as the circle of a man’s experience extends in 
the world, the firmer will be his conviction, that in proportion 
