Even if it were not the natural and happy disposition of these people to be pleased, and to place implicit confidence wherever kind treatment is experienced, that confidence would soon have been ensured by our knowledge of their friends and relations to the southward, and the information which we were enabled to give respecting their late and intended movements.  This, while it excited in them extreme surprise, served also at once to remove all distrust or apprehension, so that we soon found ourselves on the best terms imaginable.  In return for all this interesting information, they gave us the names of the different portions of land in sight, many of which being recognised in their countrymen’s charts, we no longer entertained a doubt of our being near the entrance of the strait to which all our hopes were directed.  We now found also that a point of land in sight, a few miles to the southward of the tents, was near that marked Ping-=it-k~a-l~ik on Ewerat’s chart, and that, therefore, the low shore along which we had been constantly sailing the preceding night was certainly a part of the continent.

By the time we had distributed most of our presents, and told some long stories about Winter Island, to all which they listened with eager delight and interest, we found the weather becoming so inclement as to determine us to make the best of our way on board, and to take a more favourable opportunity of renewing our visit to the Esquimaux.  After pulling out for an hour and a half, Captain Lyon, who had a boat’s crew composed of officers, and had, unfortunately, broken one of his oars, was under the necessity of returning to the shore.  My anxiety lest the ships should be ventured too near the shore, from a desire to pick up the boats, induced me to persevere an hour longer, when the wind having increased to a gale, which prevented our hearing any of the guns, I reluctantly bore up for our former landing-place.  Captain Lyon and his party having quartered themselves at the southern tents, we took up our lodgings at the others, to which we were welcomed in the kindest and most hospitable manner.  That we might incommode the Esquimaux as little as possible, we divided into parties of two in each tent, though they would willingly have accommodated twice that number.  Immediately on our arrival they offered us dry boots, and it was not long before we were entirely “rigged out” in their dresses, which, thoroughly drenched as we were by the sea, proved no small comfort to us.  With these, and a sealskin or two as a blanket, we kept ourselves tolerably warm during a most inclement night; and the tents, which but a few hours before we had looked upon as the most comfortless habitations imaginable, now afforded us a sufficient and most acceptable shelter.