306 
LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
the last edition of Mrs. Giasse has reached the cooks of the Es¬ 
quimaux, but they certainly follow her instructions in one im¬ 
portant point, which is, that before they begin to dress or cure 
the fish—they first proceed to catch it; which having accom¬ 
plished, they rip up the belly, making an exquisite fry, or per¬ 
chance a ragout of the entrails, and then the next step is to 
divest it of the blood, which abounds along the back bone, and 
which if suffered to remain would impart rather a stinking fla¬ 
vour to the commodity. Who that has watched the motions of 
a Billingsgate fishmonger, scraping the coagulated blood of the 
salmon from the back bone with his knife, but deplores the 
excessive labour to which he is obliged to subject himself, as 
well as the horrible wound that is inflicted on the ear, by the 
vile inharmonious grating of the knife as it passes in rapid suc¬ 
cession along the vertebrae of the back. The Esquimaux however 
have a more easy, and certainly a more economical method of 
despoiling the fish of its clotted blood, and in many instances, 
as the present will show, the political economists of these en¬ 
lightened times, would do well in the establishment of their 
visionary theories, to take a lesson from the actions of men in 
uncivilized life, and pay less attention to those, which distin¬ 
guish him as the child of education and of culture. 
We have supposed the fish under the hands of Meviak, to 
have been properly gutted, when seeing two of his thriving 
offspring watching with greedy eyes the broiling of some seal 
cutlets, he exclaimed Keeleekarree Eeerninya! (“ come here, my 
sons,”) not doubting that their father had reserved a tit-bit for 
them, they hastened towards him, when pointing to the interior 
of the fish besmeared and bedaubed with blood, he said, 
allookloke aoonak (“lick blood, you do,”) and voraciously indeed 
did the little urchins proceed to obey the injunctions of their 
parents, to their own great delight and gratification. To say 
that the Billingsgate fishmonger, with his nasty scrubbing brush 
could have accomplished the cleansing of the fish with equal 
dexterity and despatch, were unjustly and illiberally to deprive 
the sons of Meviak of their due portion of merit, for the neat 
and perfect manner in which they licked the fish from the jowl 
