370 
LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
in equal proportions, and should any altercation arise, which is 
very seldom the case, the nearest of kin is called in, and his 
decision is considered final. It frequently happens that on the 
marriage of an Esquimaux girl, the husband takes up his abode 
with the parents of his wife ; and in the case of the natives, who 
had established themselves in the immediate vicinity of the Vic¬ 
tory, one hut contained the father and mother, their married 
daughter and her husband, with four or five children appertaining 
to the latter ; the dogs belonging to the father amounting to 
six, and those of the husband amounting to seven, forming in 
the group an exhibition of savage life, which was scarcely to 
be equalled amongst the wildest of the Indian tribes. In the 
hut adjoining to this well-tenanted habitation, the interior of 
which, for active life, might be compared to a bee-hive, although 
not quite so sweet and mellifluous, resided the son of the before- 
mentioned couple, who preferring the life of a bachelor to that 
of a husband, had, up to his twenty-sixth year, withstood all 
the wiles and blandishments of the Esquimaux beauties, but by 
whom he was, of course, still considered as a prize to be won, al¬ 
though he obstinately persisted in regarding them in any other 
light than that of a prize, but the direct contrary, as indisput¬ 
able plagues and torments. It was, however, necessary that 
Kenneeluyoo, the name of the wayward bachelor, should have an 
individual within his hut, who would attend upon his dogs, and 
have his seal cutlets in readiness for him, on his return from his 
hunting excursions: but those occupations could only be per¬ 
formed by a female -, and, certainly, in the refined and civilized 
countries of Europe, a female fulfilling a situation of that kind, 
in the but of a young bachelor, would expose herself to be at¬ 
tacked by all the imps of calumny, who ever took upon them- 
selve-s the office of pulling to pieces the character of a woman. 
It is, however, differently constituted amongst the Esquimaux; 
Kenneeluyoo chose for his housekeeper a grave, staid, demure and 
discreet matron, who had fallen into the yellow leaf of widow¬ 
hood, at an early period of her life; and, who, for reasons, which it 
were, in this place, illiberal to notice, never entered a second time 
into the troubles and trammels of matrimony, which, however, by 
