Among the natives who visited the Fury to-day was Ewerat; of whom I have already spoken as Ang-et-kook, or chief sorcerer of the tribe, a distinction with which he had made some of our gentlemen acquainted at one, of their earliest visits to the huts.  Being desirous of seeing him perform some of the tricks which had acquired for him this pre-eminence, I requested him to indulge me with a sight of them.  After some little demur, he began to make his lips quiver, then moved his nose up and down, gradually closed his eyes, and increased the violence of his grimaces till every feature was hideously distorted; at the same time, he moved his head rapidly from side to side, uttering sometimes a snuffling sound, and at others a raving sort of cry.  Having worked himself into this ridiculous kind of phrensy, which lasted, perhaps, from twenty to thirty seconds, he suddenly discontinued it, and suffered his features to relax into their natural form; but the motion of his head seemed to have so stupified him, as indeed it well might, that there remained an unusual vacancy and a drowsy stare upon his countenance for some time afterward.  Being pressed to repeat this piece of buffoonery, he did so two or three times; and on one occasion Togolat asked him, in a serious tone, some questions respecting me, which he as seriously answered.  In general, however, the women paid little attention to his grimaces, and the whole ended with a hearty laugh from all parties.

I had to-day some conversation with a woman named Appokiuk, whom Iligliuk had mentioned as having seen Kabloona people before us.  This woman was gifted, however, with such a volubility of tongue, that speaking, as she did, in a language very imperfectly known to us, she gave no time for questions, and therefore afforded little information.  All we could make out for certain was, that she had, within a year past, seen two Kabloona oomiak (whether ships or boats was still doubtful[*]), and that her husband was now far away.  From all this we concluded that she had been far enough to the southward to see the Hudson’s Bay ships in the course of their annual voyage; and this account gave us very sanguine hopes of being thus able to communicate with them by means of some of the Esquimaux.

[Footnote:  These people apply the word oomiak to any vessel larger than a canoe.]

On the 20th, a number of our new friends having been allowed upon the upper deck, an old woman named Ay=ug-g~a-lo~ok stole our cooper’s punch, which she was showing to her companions alongside the Hecla just afterward, when Lieutenant Hoppner observed it, and sent her back with an escort.  It was impossible not to admit that the fault was chiefly on our side, in permitting these poor people to roam about too freely amid temptations which scarcely anything human could have withstood; but as it was necessary to take some notice of it, I went through nearly the same process as with Kaoongut,