In the few opportunities we had of putting their hospitality to the test, we had every reason to be pleased with them.  Both as to food and accommodation, the best they had were always at our service; and their attention, both in kind and degree, was everything that hospitality and even good-breeding could dictate.  The kindly offices of drying and mending our clothes, cooking our provision, and thawing snow for our drink, were performed by the women with an obliging cheerfulness which we shall not easily forget, and which commanded its due share of our admiration and esteem.  While thus their guest, I have passed an evening not only with comfort, but with extreme gratification; for, with the women working and singing, their husbands quietly mending their lines, the children playing before the door, and the pot boiling over the blaze of a cheerful lamp, one might well forget for the time that an Esquimaux hut was the scene of this domestic comfort and tranquillity; and I can safely affirm with Cartwright,[011] that, while thus lodged beneath their roof, I know no people whom I would more confidently trust, as respects either my person or my property, than the Esquimaux.

The estimation in which women are held among these people is, I think, somewhat greater than is usual in savage life.  In their general employments they are by no means the drudges that the wives of the Greenlander’s are said to be; being occupied only in those cares which may properly be called domestic, and, as such, are considered the peculiar business of the women among the lower classes in civilized society.  The wife of one of these people, for instance, makes and attends the fire, cooks the victuals, looks after the children, and is sempstress to her whole family; while her husband is labouring abroad for their subsistence.  In this respect it is not even necessary to except their task Of cutting up the small seals, which is, in truth, one of the greatest luxuries and privileges they enjoy; and, even if it were esteemed a labour, it could scarcely be considered equivalent to that of the women in many of our own fishing-towns, where the men’s business is at an end the moment the boat touches the beach.  The most laborious of their tasks occur, perhaps, in making their various journeys, when all their goods and chattels are to be removed at once, and when each individual must undoubtedly perform a full share of the general labour.  The women are, however, good walkers and not easily fatigued; for we have several times known a young woman of two-and-twenty, with a child in her hood, walk twelve miles to the ships and back again the same day, for the sake of a little bread-dust and a tin canister.  When stationary in the winter, they have really almost a sinecure of it, sitting quietly in their huts, and having little or no employment for the greater part of the day.  In short, there are few, if any people, in this state of society among whom the women are so well off.  They always sit upon the beds with their legs doubled under them, and are uneasy in the posture usual with us.  The men sometimes sit as we do, but more generally with their legs crossed before them.