left him to find his way with a stick in the best manner he could, while the young and robust ones were many of them drawn on sledges.  There is, indeed, no doubt that, had their necessities or mode of life required a longer journey than he could thus have accomplished, they would have pushed on like the Indians, and left a fellow-creature to perish.  It was certainly considered incumbent on his son to support him, and he was fortunate in that son’s being a very good man; but a few more such journeys to a man of seventy would not impose this encumbrance upon him much longer.  Illumea, the mother of several grown-up children, lived also in the same hut with her other relations.  She did not, however, interfere, as in Greenland, with the management of her son’s domestic concerns, though his wife was half an idiot.  She was always badly clothed, and, even in the midst of plenty, not particularly well-fed, receiving everything more as an act of charity than otherwise; and she will probably be less and less attended to, in proportion as she stands more in need of assistance.

The different families appear always to live on good terms with each other, though each preserves its own habitation and property as distinct and independent as any housekeeper in England.  The persons living under one roof, who are generally closely related, maintain a degree of harmony among themselves which is scarcely ever disturbed.  The more turbulent passions which, when unrestrained by religious principle, or unchecked by the dread of human punishment, usually create so much havoc in the world, seem to be very seldom excited in the breasts of these people, which renders personal violence or immoderate anger extremely rare among them; and one may sit in a hut for a whole day, and never observe an angry word or look, except in driving out the dogs.  If they take an offence, it is more common for them to show it by the more quiet method of sulkiness, and this they now and then tried as a matter of experiment with us.  Okotook, who was often in this humour, once displayed it to some of our gentlemen in his own hut, by turning his back and frequently repeating the expression “good-by,” as a broad hint to them to go away.  Toolooak was also a little given to this mood, but never retained it long, and there was no malice mixed with his displeasure.  One evening that he slept on board the Fury, he either offended Mr. Skeoch, or thought that he had done so, by this kind of humour; at all events, they parted for the night without any formal reconciliation.  The next morning Mr. Skeoch was awakened at an unusually early hour, by Toolooak’s entering his cabin and taking hold of his hand to shake it, by way of making up the supposed quarrel.  On a disposition thus naturally charitable, what might not Christian education and Christian principles effect?  Where a joke is evidently intended, I never knew people more ready to join in it than these are.  If ridiculed for any particularity of manner, figure, or countenance, they are sure not to be long behind-hand in returning it, and that very often with interest.  If we were the aggressors in this way, some ironical observation respecting the Kabloonas was frequently the consequence; and no small portion of wit as well as irony was at times mixed with their raillery.