been all his life accustomed, so long as that change is suitable to his new home.  We ourselves have personally experienced this to some extent, and were quite amazed at the rapid and easy way in which nature enabled us to enjoy and thrive on food at which our stomach would have revolted in England or any southern land.  In every country in the world, ‘from Indus to the pole,’ the food eaten by the natives is that which is incomparably best suited to the climate.  In the frozen regions, and every cold country, the best of all nourishment is that which contains a large proportion of fat and oil.  In Britain, we read with disgust of the Greenlander eagerly swallowing whale-oil and blubber; but in his country, it is precisely what is best adapted to sustain vital energy.  Europeans in the position of Franklin’s crew would become acclimatised, and gradually accustomed to the food of the natives, even before their own provisions were exhausted; and after that, we may be very sure their appetites would lose all delicacy, and they would necessarily and easily conform to the usages, as regards food, of the natives around them.  We may strengthen our opinion by the direct and decisive testimony of Sir John Boss himself, who says:  ’I have little doubt, indeed, that many of the unhappy men who have perished from wintering in these climates, and whose histories are well known, might have been saved had they conformed, as is so generally prudent, to the usages and the experience of the natives.’  Undoubtedly they might!

Secondly, as to the Europeans being unable to capture the beasts, birds, and fishes so dexterously as the natives, we have reason to know that the reverse is the case.  It is true that the latter know the habits and haunts of wild creatures by long experience, and also know the best way to capture some of them; but a very little communication with natives enables the European to learn the secret; and he soon far excels his simple instructors in the art, being aided by vastly superior reasoning faculties, and also by incomparably better appliances for the chase.  Firearms for shooting beasts and birds, and seines for catching fish, render the Esquimaux spears, and arrows, and traps mere children’s toys in comparison.  Moreover, a ship is never frozen up many weeks, before some wandering tribe is sure to visit it; and all navigators have found the natives a mild, friendly, grateful people, with fewer vices than almost any other savages in the World.  They will thankfully barter as many salmon as will feed a ship’s crew one day for a file or two, or needles, or a tin-canister, or piece of old iron-hoop, or any trifling article of hardware; and so long as the vessel remains, they and other tribes of their kindred will frequently visit it, and bring animals and fish to barter for what is literally almost valueless to European adventurers.