LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 40l 
nther passions combined, to which the animal man is subject. 
It must be allowed, that climate has something to do in the 
generation of it, and consequently, that it glows with greater 
intensity under an Italian sky, than under a Siberian one. Now 
it appears, that Alwak was just of that age when this extraordi¬ 
nary passion begins to show itself amongst the youths and 
maidens of the Esquimaux people, although it frequently hap¬ 
pens, that no object is to be found, which can call that passion 
into action; and as reciprocity is an essential feature of its exist¬ 
ence, it sometimes dies away, on either side, without producing 
any of those effects, which so particularly distinguish it in 
other countries. It is said, and really believed by some simple¬ 
tons, that there are two peaces, in which this passion never dis¬ 
plays itself, and those are, a monastery and a nunnery ; we, how¬ 
ever, know from experience, that although it may be convenient 
for the inmates of those establishments, to impress such a belief 
upon the bigoted, credulous catholics; they may, in some 
respects, be considered as the very hot-beds of the passion, and 
that the effects of it as regularly exhibit themselves, as in an 
Irish village. If, however, the generation of that passion is in 
the least dependent upon the temperature of the air, (and it is 
allowed to be so, by all those, who have deeply studied the 
subject,) it must be admitted, that an Esquimaux hut is the very 
last place that a connoisseur, or more properly speaking an 
amateur , would look for a display of it. It happened, however, 
that in the hut contiguous to that, which was the domicile of 
Alwak, lived the fair damsel Narluwarga, then at the blooming 
age of sixteen, but whom Alwak had chosen as his wife, at the 
age of four, when he first beheld her infant feet making their 
impression on the snow new fallen ; and the great difference 
between an Esquimaux and a. European, in an affair of this sort, 
is, that the former has the means always at hand, of discover¬ 
ing before marriage, whether his future spouse has any preten¬ 
sions to the character of a shrew or a termagant; and the latter, 
unfortunately for him, has no means of effecting that discovery, 
until all that is left for him, is, to submit himself quietly to the 
evil, until death kindly steps in to relieve him from it. 
17. 3f 
