account on board, we were enabled, at a small expense of useful stores, to furnish them very abundantly with wood for this purpose.  Arnaneelia also informed us that Okotook, who had been unwell for some days, was now much worse, and seemed, as he described it, to be labouring under a violent pulmonary complaint.  On the circumstance being mentioned to Mr. Skeoch, he kindly volunteered to go to the village, and accordingly took his seat on the sledge, accompanied also by Mr. Sherer.  They carried with them a quantity of bread-dust to be distributed among the Esquimaux at the huts, their success in seal-catching having lately been indifferent.

A number of Esquimaux came to the ships on the 25th, notwithstanding a strong breeze from the S.W.b.W., with a considerable snowdrift.  From these people we learned that Okotook’s complaint had increased since Mr. Skeoch’s visit, and that he was now extremely ill.  Mr. Bushnan immediately offered to go to the huts for the purpose of bringing him on board, where, by Mr. Edwards’s kind attentions, and the enjoyment of warmth and dryness, we hoped soon to recover him.  Mr. Bushnan, therefore, without waiting for the return of the sledges, set out for the village at an early hour in the forenoon, accompanied by the sergeant of marines.  At eleven at night our party returned on board, bringing on a sledge Okotook, Iligliuk, and their son.  That Iligliuk would accompany her husband, I, of course, took for granted and wished; but as the boy could do us no good, and was, moreover, a desperate eater, I had desired Mr. Bushnan to try whether a slight objection to his being of the party would induce Okotook to leave him with his other relations.  This he had cautiously done; but, the instant the proposal was made, Okotook, without any remark, began to take off the clothes he had himself just dressed in to set out.  No farther objection being made, however, he again prepared for the journey, Iligliuk assisting him with the most attentive solicitude.  Before the invalid was suffered to leave his apartment, some of the by-standers sent for Ewerat, now better known to our people by the undignified appellation of the “conjuror.”  Ewerat, on this occasion, maintained a degree of gravity and reserve calculated to inspire somewhat more respect than we had hitherto been disposed to entertain for him in that capacity.  Placing himself at the door of the apartment opposite Okotook, who was still seated on the bed, he held both his thumbs in his mouth, keeping up a silent but solemn converse with his toorngow,[*] the object of which was, as Mr. Bushnan presently afterward found, to inquire into the efficacy and propriety of the sick man’s removal.  Presently he began to utter a variety of confused and inarticulate sounds; and it being at length understood that a favourable answer had been given, Okotook was carried out and placed on the sledge, Ewerat still mumbling his thumbs and muttering his incantations as before.  When