Esquimaux use on any other occasion.  One of the younger men then came forward, and was lifting up the stretcher of their boat to strike our people, who were good-humouredly laughing at the old man’s violence, when I thought it high time to interpose, and, raising a boat-hook over the head of the Esquimaux, as if about to strike them, soon brought them into a cooler mood; after which, to prevent farther altercation, I ordered our people out of the boat.  We had by this time succeeded in purchasing all the oil brought by the first canoes; and as the old fellow, who was commanding officer of the oomiak, obstinately persisted in his refusal to sell his, I ordered him away, when he immediately rowed to the Hecla, and, as I was afterward informed by Captain Lyon, sold his oil for less than he might have obtained at first.  Four other oomiaks afterward came from the shore, from which we were distant five or six miles.  Each of these contained from fourteen to twenty-six persons, the majority being females and young children.  Upon the whole, not less than one hundred of the natives visited the ships in the course of the evening.

These people possessed in an eminent degree the disposition to steal all they could lay their hands on, which has almost universally been imputed to every tribe of Esquimaux hitherto visited by Europeans.  They tried more than once the art of picking our pockets, and were as bold and unembarrassed as ever immediately after detection.  It is impossible to describe the horribly disgusting manner in which they sat down, as soon as they felt hungry, to eat their raw blubber, and to suck the oil remaining on the skins we had just emptied, the very smell of which, as well as the appearance, was to us almost insufferable.  The disgust which our seaman could not help expressing at this sight seemed to create in the Esquimaux the most malicious amusement; and when our people turned away, literally unable to bear the sight without being sick, they would, as a good joke among themselves, run after them, holding out a piece of blubber or raw seal’s flesh dripping with oil and filth, as if inviting them to partake of it.  Both the men and women were guilty of still more disgusting indecencies, which seemed to afford them amazing diversion.  A worse trait even than all these was displayed by two women alongside the Hecla, who, in a manner too unequivocal to be misunderstood, offered to barter their children for some article of trifling value, beginning very deliberately to strip them of their clothes, which they did not choose to consider as included in the intended bargain.

Upon the whole, it was impossible for us not to receive a very unfavourable impression of the general behaviour and moral character of the natives of this part of Hudson’s Strait, who seem to have acquired, by an annual intercourse with our ships for nearly a hundred years, many of the vices which unhappily attend a first intercourse with the civilized world, without having imbibed any of the virtues or refinements which adorn and render it happy.